


Five thousand roses

by forestgreen



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestgreen/pseuds/forestgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is broken and all the more dangerous for it. The world should tread carefully around the shards of her former self lest they cut themselves on Antonia Stark's sharp edges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story wouldn't exist without Akelios, who pushed me to write it and was, as usual, the best enabler anyone could ask for. All remaining mistakes are mine.

_"People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses_  
 _in one garden . . . yet they don't find what they're looking for."  
_

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's first memory is the sharp, burning shock of electricity. She remembers with crystal clarity the way her father picked her up and checked her over. He'd squatted next to her and wiped the tears off her face as he explained how electricity worked, showing her how to take the power socket apart and put it back together. Toni had watched mesmerized, pain and fear forgotten. "Now me," she'd demanded, grabbing for the screwdriver. Her father had ruffled her hair with a laugh and let her have it.

She'd wanted to keep the memory for herself, but somehow she ends up sharing it with the world in one talk show or another. The story spreads like wildfire. 

"My mind was born to electricity," is one of the first quotes Google spits out when you type in 'Antonia Stark.' 

Of all the half-truths and outright lies her public image is made of, that quote is the one Toni likes the most.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's favorite superhero growing up is Batman. It's her biggest secret. He doesn't need superpowers to save the day, just intelligence and money. Toni has both to spare. When she grows up, she's going to be a superhero just like him.

Her room is filled to the brim with Captain America toys, and the walls are covered with dozens of Captain America posters. She owns every single comic and is the only child in the world with an exact replica of his shield. 

"Who's your favorite hero?" her dad asks her every night. 

"Captain America," Toni answers. It's the first lie she learns to get away with. 

The thing she likes the most about Batman is that he's never been real, and her father doesn't need to find his body. 

Toni hates summer with its long string of endless days. She's cooped up in Malibu, dressed up in pink and pastels, curtsying left and right, with only her mother and her society friends for company. She strikes off the days on her Captain America wall calendar while she waits for her father to return from his Arctic trip. If she's a bit more forceful with her pen on the days printed over Captain America's face, no one notices. 

Toni screams with joy when her father comes back and thanks him when he gives her yet another Captain America toy. The summer is finally over, and her dad is hers again. They're going to build a robot dog together. She's going to give it pointy ears and call it Bat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her parents are fighting about her again. These days, they are always fighting about her.

She tries to concentrate on her homework, but the math isn't hard enough to keep her attention. She's skipped two grades already, and the math is still too easy. School bores her. She'd rather spend her days working with her dad in the Stark Industries' labs. 

"She's a girl, Howard!" Her mother's voice carries through the empty corridor. Toni sighs. She's heard it all before. "She should be allowed to grow up normally." Toni wonders if the two of them ever tire of having the same argument. 

"Toni _isn't_ normal. She's a genius, like me, like my father. When she's running Stark Industries she'll need—"

"This is insanity, Howard. Antonia isn't going to run your company," Maria screams. "Her husband will. You've filled that girl's head with your crazy dreams. God knows I wanted to give you a son, but Antonia isn't a substitute. She's a girl! She can't run around wearing pants and oil smeared t-shirts forever. She needs to learn what it means to be a proper woman." 

"I didn't want a son," her dad screams back. "I didn't want any children! Getting pregnant was your idea." 

The tip of Toni's fountain pen snaps. The ink spreads all over her notebook before she can stop it, ruining her homework. Down the corridor, her parents are still yelling at each other. Toni ignores the voices, ignores the way the pit of her stomach hurts or how her head pounds. She can write off tinkering in the workshop tonight. By the time night falls her father will be too drunk to be of any use, and her mother won't be any better. 

"I don't care what you or the board expect," her father is still arguing. "Toni is a Stark first and foremost! She's not going to be some society wife." Toni knows that tone. It's the passionate certainty of a visionary who wants people to _see_. 

She knows what her father's friends whisper behind his back. They call Toni 'Howard's next crazy experiment.' No better than the flying car or the arc reactor—clever and brilliant to show, but still useless. 

Toni is going to prove them wrong. Even her dad. Howard just wants her to carry on _his_ legacy, but Toni wants more for herself. She's just Howard Stark's daughter now, but when she's done reshaping science and modern warfare it will be _her_ face people remember when they hear the name Stark. 

_Antonia Stark's father_ , that's how she wants history to remember Howard. 

Toni rips off the ruined pages of her notebook and does her homework again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In her high school senior year, Toni's body catches up with her mind. She's two years younger than everyone else in her class, but she's already taller than her mother. Her body is like a foreign country made out of valleys and soft hills where flat plains used to be.

"You're beautiful, Antonia," her mother tells her with the same proprietary tone her father says, "You're brilliant, Toni," as if that's the only thing she needs to be. As if that's the only thing about her that matters. 

She notices the way boys look at her now and _likes it_. There's an ache between her legs in that one place no one really likes to talk about that leaves her craving more than just looks. At night, when she's alone in her room, she imagines what it'd be like to let them touch with their hands the places on her body their eyes are constantly following. She lays still in the darkness and pretends her hands are theirs. 

This new body of her fascinates her, and she sets off to explore it with a thoroughness she'd only ever given machines before. 

It isn't that Toni doesn't understand the tacit rules of life, it's just that she isn't used to rules applying to her. As Howard Stark's only child she's never been well versed in abstinence. When her own hands stop being enough, she sits next to Ethan Godfrey during lunch, smiles as her mother taught her and lowers her eyes just _so_. 

The world is hers by right. So she takes it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slut.

Bitch. 

Whore. 

Baby. 

I love you.

Don't leave me.

Why? 

Bitch. 

Fucking whore.

Slut. 

Slut. 

By the time Toni leaves for college, she's heard it all. 

'People are no better than sharks, Antonia,' her mother told her once when Toni had been small enough to think her infallible. 'If they smell blood, they'll attack. Smile at them, and never let them know it hurts. A smile is a woman's best weapon.'

It's the best advice her mother ever gave her. 

Toni smiles until her face hurts and it feels like a victory.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's the summer of 81. The air is filled with the buzz of change, and Toni's blood burns with the excitement of things yet to come. For the first time ever her father forgoes his yearly Arctic expedition to stay with her. Toni will be going to MIT in the fall and life has never seemed more promising.

Her father takes his favorite car and personally drives her from New York all the way up to Cambridge. Her mother flies from L.A. and meets them there. Toni's surprised she bothered. 

Her dad at MIT is a whole other person. He comes alive as he shows them the campus, sharing with Toni stories of the shenanigans he and his friends got up to. Her mother laughs along with them and tentatively shares some stories of her own youth. Toni can't remember the last time the three of them were able to truly enjoy one another's company.

It's a wonderful summer day. The sky is bright blue with only the sun for company. Toni wants to freeze this moment in time and stay there forever. And yet, like every other summer of her life, she can't wait for fall to come. The future is calling her and Toni aches to meet it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni and her mother are sitting on a bench near Alpha Theta Sigma Chi's frat house, waiting for Howard.

If she'd been born male, Toni would've been inside the house now, together with her father, getting to know her future frat brothers. She's a female, though. And women, Toni has been told, are not allowed inside frat houses. School rules. 

She expects her father to buy her way in, the way he's done every time Toni's been denied something. Instead, Howard smiles at her and says, "Toni, darling, why don't you go with your mother to the park and wait for me there? I'll meet you later. I just want to see what the younger brothers have done with the old place." 

Toni and her mom don't have much in common these days. When the two of them are alone, Toni finds herself at a loss for words, desperately searching for something to say to break the awkward silence. 

"I'll have Howard buy you a house close to the campus," Maria says out of the blue, startling Toni. 

Toni sighs. "I don't need a house, Mom. I'll room at McCormick Hall with the other girls." 

"I know you don't think much of me, Antonia," her mother says, looking into the distance. "I don't understand machines or physics. I can't follow when Howard and you start talking shop, and half the time you're convinced I'm the enemy."

"Mom, that's not tr—" Toni protests.

"No, don't interrupt," her mother cuts her off. "I want to say my piece." She goes on, voice even, "I have no delusions that I'll ever be anything but the Wicked Witch in the novel of your life, but you have to understand that I—no, that's not true." She huffs out a laugh. "Understanding is probably too much to ask. I want you to know that I do love you, Antonia. I've always wanted only the best for you. A good man, with a head for numbers and a heart for diplomacy. One who'd run the company for you so that you can spend your days in the workshop, tinkering with your toys and inventing things. Being _happy_."

Her mother raises a hand as if to caress Toni's cheek, but stops herself at the last second. "I don't think you'll be happy being the company's CEO, but you've made your choice and even though I don't agree, I want you to succeed, Antonia. I might not know machines, but I know _men_. Don't think for a second they'll give you anything without charging five times the price. If you want to run your dad's company, being a genius inventor won't be enough."

"Dad—" Toni starts to say but her mother interrupts her.

"Your father is a _man_. He gets things for free you'll have to fight tooth and nail for. He's there now, isn't he?" she says as she points to the fraternity house. "Inside the house, with his brothers, talking about man things, while you and I sit here on a bench in the _park_ and wait for him to come pick us up."

Toni shakes her head and sighs. "He just wanted to see the house, Mom," she breathes out. 

"The house. The world. What's the difference?" her mother says, eyes cold. "Men will try to keep you out and tell you it's the rules. So you need to play their games better than they do. And you need to know what the rules are, because life will force you to break them. 

"We'll get you your own house, Antonia," her mother continues, and Toni knows there's no use arguing when she gets like that. "Everything new and state of the art, as befits the heiress of Stark Industries. Let _them_ be the ones outside, wanting to get in."

Toni's father taught her to build weapons, but it's her mother who teaches her how to use them. Toni never gets the chance to thank her for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her mother gives her diamond studs as a farewell present and Toni hides them as soon as she's at MIT. She buys plastic hoops instead, almost as big as her face. Her father gets her a brand new cherry red Corvette and Toni flaunts it around campus. She drives with the top down, in love with the way people stare after her as she speeds by. She feels powerful and sexy at the wheel of that sleek red beast with so much horsepower all to herself.

The best present of all she gives herself: a fake ID that says she's 21, good enough to pass the toughest scrutiny.

College is everything Toni thought it would be and yet completely different. It's her first time away from home, but she's too busy making friends and going out to really notice that she misses it. She talks quantum physics one second, and politics the next. She has heated discussions about string theory and applied math, theology, sex, Star Wars, Schrödinger's cat, social rights, women, music, war, men. 

For Toni, life at MIT comes in waves, measured in midterms and finals with never ending nights of partying in between. She dresses in neon bright mini-skirts and leg warmers, owns stretch pants and oversized tops in every color she can think of. She spends hours backcombing her hair and goes through a bottle of hair spray every couple of weeks. MTV runs non-stop in her house. If it's loud and makes it onto MTV, Toni loves it—her taste in music isn't more discerning than that. AC/DC, The Police, The Cure, David Bowie, The Go-Go's, Prince, Air Supply, Bryan Adams—she loves them all; would have sex with each and every one of them given half the chance. 

She walks into bars as if she owns them and leans on the counter absolutely conscious of how it makes her mini-skirt ride up. By the time she's done dragging a cigarette to her mouth, men are offering her a light and asking if they can buy her a drink. Just the idea of how the evening will end gets her wet. She smiles and takes the drink, the light . . . and everything else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She joins the AI Lab, even though everyone tells her it's just a shadow of what it used to be, before copyright laws hit the nascent software industry, and LMI and Symbolics stole MIT's best hackers. She's the only female in the group, but Toni doesn't care. She's getting used to being the only female almost everywhere.

Computers are the future. Toni knows it, understands it, lives it every day. Software is going to revolutionize the weapons industry—probably all industries, but Toni doesn't care much about the rest; she knows where she's heading. 

She dreams up automatic targeting systems that will minimize death tolls, intelligent robots that will increase production yield, computerized communication systems, broader uses for existing military satellites. It all seems impossible now, but Toni sees the seeds springing up around her. 

When she tells her father, he laughs and says she's reading too much science fiction. Toni is left reeling with the realization that her dad doesn't get it, that she's leaving _him_ behind. Her father—the genius inventor, the crazy dreamer, her first and best teacher—is so blinded by the now that he can't see the future. 

'He's getting old,' Toni thinks to herself. 

It terrifies her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni breaks thirteen mugs, two coffee pots and one sugar bowl before people at the AI Lab stop asking her to clear the table after meetings. The first two times aren't even on purpose—balancing mugs on a tablet is harder than it looks. The other times . . . well . . . sometimes a girl has to give social progress a _push_.

"Do you want me to help?" Toni asks with the sweetest smile she can fake, reaching for the empty coffee pot. 

There's choir of "No! Don't worry about it. We've got it covered," before she's even done asking. 

Toni makes it to the bathroom—the one that's just hers by virtue of being the only woman on the team—closes the door and bites her hand to keep herself from laughing out loud. 

She's two months into the term when she first notices that she's the only one being asked to write minutes during meetings. Her first attempts to purposely leave things out or document them wrongly backfire. People, including professors, start questioning her capacity to understand the concepts being discussed and worry that she might not be able to keep up with the workload. 

Toni's second attempt goes better. It's her tried and true method for dealing with most things—she creates a robot. It doesn't look much like a robot, just a box with an integrated mic attached to a computer with a speech recognition software Toni herself designed. It puts to shame everything else on the market. 

She bats her eyelashes at two of her lab partners, and they carry GOSSIP into the next meeting for her. Toni sells it as the "necessary next step for Artificial Intelligence," and double-dog dares everyone in the room to take more accurate notes than her program. Toni leans back on her chair and enjoys the harried look on people's faces as they try to write down every word said. 

GOSSIP still wins. 

Professor Minsky is so blown away that he assigns Toni two lab minions to help her further improve the software. Toni tries not to abuse the power. 

Much.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Have you met any nice boys, Antonia?" her mother asks her over the phone.

Toni sighs, knowing where the conversation is going. "Mom, we've been through this. I didn't come to college to meet boys." 

"I know that, darling," her mother says. "I just want—You have to start thinking about your future."

Toni closes her eyes and repeats to herself the first ten digits of pi. "Mom, I'm acing all my classes. The latest patent filed by SI was based on one of my ideas. I don't think I have to worry about my future." 

"Antonia, there's more to life than machines. Even after you're the head of Stark Industries, you'll need to marry, have children," her mother insists in that cajoling tone that makes Toni want to hit something, as if Toni is being irrational. 

"Stop trying to live my life for me. I'm not you. I don't _want_ to be you," Toni snaps. She'd assumed that things between them were improving, as if buying a house at MIT could change anything. Whatever little peace they'd found had been just a respite in the battle of wills that is their relationship, not an end to the war. She'd been naive to think otherwise. 

"I just want you to be happy," her mother whispers.

Toni laughs out loud. "I'm happy, Mom! Or I was, until you started this conversation. For fuck's sake!" She steamrolls over her mother's attempt to correct her language, "You have a husband you can barely stand and a daughter that . . . . Mom, when have either of us ever made _you_ happy?" 

"Antonia," her mother gasps. "Of course you make me happy. I love you."

Toni sighs, exhausted. "I know that, Mom. And I love you too. I just don't think we like each other much." 

"You're your father's daughter, Antonia," Maria says before she hangs up, and means it as an insult. 

Toni goes out and drinks herself stupid. She wakes up naked next to some guy whose name she doesn't remember (Dennis? Dave? Dorian? Something with D).

The room spins as Toni closes her eyes and fights off waves of nausea. She wants to call her mother and apologize for being such a crappy daughter. And she's furious with herself for wanting to apologize at all. It's her fucking life; she should be allowed to do with it whatever the fuck she wants. 

Toni misses her childhood with sudden fierceness. Loving her parents didn't hurt this much back then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I know which class is going to be my favorite this term," a student stage whispers the first time Toni walks into Aerospace Engineering and Design. His friends laugh along.

Their gazes linger on her ass as she passes by. "Hey, beautiful, if you ever need tutoring just say the word," he calls after her, and grabs her hand when she ignores him. "Come on, don't be like that. At least let me introduce myself." 

Toni usually doesn't have a problem with guys lusting after her—three quarters of the times she _wants_ the attention—but the insinuation that she might need help to pass the class hits her wrong. 

She leans forward into his personal space and grins. "Let me guess," she says, loud enough for everyone to hear, "the name is Jerk, Stupid Jerk."

The room explodes with laughter as Mr. Jerk flushes bright red and tries to sink in on himself. Even his friends are laughing at him. See how he likes being the butt of the joke. Toni yanks her hand free and walks to the other end of the classroom.

The room is packed except for the far end of it, where a boy has been left alone with almost two rows of seats all to himself. 

"Are these taken?" she asks, pointing to the empty seats next to him.

His eyes dart around as if making sure Toni is actually addressing him. "N-no," he stammers, pulling his books closer, making room for her to sit down.

She's rather charmed. "Antonia Stark. Friends call me Toni." She offers him her hand.

"I'm Rhodey," he says, and takes her hand with a shy smile. His handshake is firm without trying to prove something, and Toni gives him further points because he keeps his eyes trained on her face the whole time despite the rather low cut of her top.

By the end of the class, his eyes haven't slipped once. Toni is . . . impressed? offended? curious? She doesn't really know what she is, only that it requires further investigation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rhodey puts his pen down, closes the book and sighs. "Okay, ask. Whatever it is. Out with it. You're driving me crazy." 

Toni raises one eyebrow. "Uh, I've got no idea what you're talking about." 

"I can feel you looking at me," Rhodey says. 

"What? I can't look at people in my own house? Because that'll be kind of hard to enforce, what with you being right there and me—"

"I can feel you looking at me with _intent_ ," Rhodey interrupts her. "Just ask." 

Toni crinkles her face with suspicion. They've known each other only three weeks and he's already able to see through her bullshit. She's sure that's cheating. 

"Are you gay?" she finally asks point blank. There's no longer any point in being subtle. 

"What?" Rhodey blinks. "Uh . . . No, of course not."

"You can tell me," Toni insists. "I know you wannabe military types have to be careful with that kind of information, but I won't tell anyone. I swear." 

"Seriously, no, I'm not," Rhodey insists. "Where did you get that from?" 

"I've been trying to get you into bed for weeks and you keep ignoring me," Toni says, a bit piqued. "Today I opened the door wearing nothing but a towel and you offered to come back later so that I could finish dressing." 

Rhodey dry coughs. He peeks at Toni's body for a second before he catches himself and purposely fixes his eyes on her face. "I-I thought you were just flirting."

Toni gapes at him. "You thought—duh!"

"You flirt with everyone, Toni. It's like your default setting," he says. "I didn't want to make any assumptions." 

"Assumptions?" It's Toni's time to blink. "What's there to assume other than the obvious?"

"Come on, Toni. It's not like a girl like you is going to be really interested in a guy like me," he says. "I like—I—You're the best study partner I could hope for. You have a grasp on aerodynamics like no one else in that class. I don't want to screw that up."

Toni raises her forefinger and watches him with narrowed eyes. "A girl like me? What's that even supposed to mean?" 

Rhodey snorts. "I don't know. Pretty, rich . . . white?" 

"Okay," Toni says, trying to digest that. "No, actually, it's not. I mean, is that an issue? You don't like pretty, rich, white girls or—"

"Don't play dumb, Toni. It doesn't suit you," Rhodey snaps. "Of course I like you. Everybody likes you; that's the point. Why would you want to be with me?"

Toni stares at him. "Why not?"

"Because I—I wouldn't even know what to . . . do," he admits and looks as though he wants the earth to swallow him. It's unbearably cute. "I haven't . . . ." His hands flail helplessly. "With anyone . . . before."

"That isn't a no," Toni clarifies, because she's still not clear on that. "It doesn't sound like a no."

Rhodey licks his lips and clears his throat. "It isn't." 

Toni grin is dirty and filled with promises as she straddles his lap. "Well, honey-bear, you've got one thing right. I'm the best study partner you could hope for."

"D-don't call me that," Rhodey stammers, eyes impossibly wide.

"Oh, pumpkin-pie," Toni croons. "I'm going to have so much fun with you." She kisses his mouth shut before he can protest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things with Rhodey are . . . Toni can't really explain it. He breaks all of her carefully established rules without even meaning to.

Toni doesn't do sex with the same person more than twice. Three times tops. More than that and men start assuming things, as if spreading her legs to let them into her body is an open invitation to other parts of her life. One moment they're having sex and it's all glorious orgasms and afterglows; the next they're questioning why she spends so much time in her lab instead of with them, as if her time is theirs to dispose of. 

Thus, Toni's golden rule of dating is born: no repeats unless the sex is very, very good, and even then proceed with caution. 

Things with Rhodey get a bit out of control. 

He's careful with her in ways no one has been before, in ways Toni didn't even know she wanted. For all that she sets out to teach him about sex, it's Rhodey who teaches her how much more fulfilling sex can be with a partner who's had more than three nights to _learn_ Toni's body and its reactions. And learn it he does. He's new to it all, filled with wonder and enthusiasm. He treats every second with Toni like a precious gift, doesn't demand more than she's willing to give. 

When she stands him up because she's too caught up with an experiment and loses track of time, he comes to check on her and brings her _food_. He laughs when she throws him out of her lab instead of becoming angry and issuing ultimatums, as if Toni being Toni is something he can't help but enjoy. It confuses her. 

And then there's the outside world. Toni has never reacted well to people trying to impose their opinions on her. She's a Stark before anything else, and Starks, her father taught her, do whatever they want. Because they're geniuses, because they're filthy rich, because they can get away with it. 

She notices the way people look at her when she's out with Rhodey—the disapproval, the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) hint that she can do better, that she _should_ do better, that her choice is wrong. It pisses her off. Giving Rhodey up feels like letting them win, and Toni hates losing. The more people expect her to dump him, the more they insist that she should, the harder she holds on. She flaunts Rhodey in their faces, kisses him where everyone can see, takes him to bars and parties, refuses to hide. 

She verbally flails anyone stupid enough to try and say something to her face, and uses her name and her father's influence without a hint of remorse to utterly destroy the three assholes who dare show their disapproval with more than just words. Toni has been able to cry on command since she was five—Howard Stark is as powerless against her tears now as he was back then. 

Toni's a dangerous enemy to have, and she makes damn sure people know it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Tuesdays, Rhodey has some sort of ROTC leadership training thing-y. Toni's disappointment at having to give him up for the day is softened by Rhodey putting on his cadet uniform. Toni keeps trying to make him late—cheap polyester on Rhodey does estrange things to her. She doesn't succeed, because Rhodey is a responsible, rule-abiding kind of guy, but Toni doesn't give up hope. There's always next week.

Since Rhodey isn't there, Tuesdays become girls' night out, which mostly consist of Toni and Susan, the only other female in her engineering class, drinking expensive wine and smoking pot at Toni's place without having to fend off stupid advances from guys who can't take a hint.

It's already well past midnight, but Toni doesn't have classes in the morning and there's still half a bottle of wine left. It's her duty as a Stark to help put the little thing out of its misery. Her dad would approve. She's sprawled on the couch, her feet resting on Susan's lap, as the two of them past a joint back and forth while MTV runs in the background.

"Have you thought how you'll break the news to your mother?" Susan asks her. "She's going to blow a gasket."

"What news?" Toni asks absently, balancing on the fine edge between tipsy and too-drunk.

"Rhodey," Susan says while her fingers trail up and down Toni's calf.

"What about him?"

"Come on, you've been together for over six months now. You took him along for _spring break_." Susan takes the joint out of Toni's hand, ignoring her protests and finishes it. "That's like a marriage proposal in your book."

Toni fakes a shudder. "Bite your tongue."

"I'm not kidding, sooner or later you're going to have to tell your parents and—"

"Susan, my mom is convinced I'm the Virgin Mary, and I have no intention whatsoever of dissuading her from that notion," Toni says. 

Susan snorts. "What about daddy dearest?"

Toni shrugs. "We have an agreement. He doesn't comment on my sex life. I don't comment on his." 

"Really?" Susan looks surprised.

Toni snorts. "He caught me _in flagrante delecto_ back in high school. We had this very awkward talk about the value of discretion and propriety. I was forced to point out that I'd been keeping my mouth shut about his long string of affairs for over a decade and made it clear that I would expect the same courtesy."

"I pity your mother," Susan says.

Toni chuckles bitterly. "She knows. She's known longer than I have. She just pretends she doesn't." Toni imitates her mother's haughty voice, "Men have _needs_ , Antonia. You'll understand when you're older." She sips her wine and exhales. "I'd have dumped his sorry ass ages ago."

Susan tilts her head and watches Toni with a puzzled expression. "I thought you liked your dad."

"So what?" Toni shrugs. "He's still an ass."

"The family life of the rich and famous," Susan says, shaking her head. 

Toni drains the last of her glass and pours herself another. "Come off it. Money has nothing to do with it and you know it. As far as I am concerned, sex? Yeah, baby. Relationships? Hell, no."

"Maybe you should tell that to lover-boy," Susan says. "The way he looks at you, he's probably already saving for a ring."

Toni rolls her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Six months and counting, Toni, that's all I'm saying."

"The boy was a virgin when I got my hands into him," Toni says. "I'm just making sure he's trained good and proper before I release him back into the game. The sisterhood should thank me." 

"You're such a giver," Susan deadpans. 

"I know," Toni says and laughs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rhodey turns down Toni's invitation to go with her to New York during summer break. It's the end of his sophomore year, and the Air Force wants to kidnap him for Field Training. It's grossly unfair, Toni thinks. Rhodey spent the whole term studying like a man possessed. He should get to enjoy summer like everyone else.

Instead, the Air Force expects him to spend his well-earned break crawling through mud and eating worms (maybe even rats) and doing stupid survival training exercises, or something equally inane. Weeks upon weeks without access to plumbing or any kind of technology, as if they were back in the Middle Ages. Toni's skin crawls just thinking about it. 

Rhodey laughs it off, says she's being overly dramatic. He claims he's actually looking forward to it, but Toni can't see how. She's sure he's trying to put up a front for her. Cheer her up. 

She doesn't want him to go. Toni has _plans_ for the summer. Plans that involve sex, sex and more sex with some sightseeing thrown in for good measure. Maybe sex while sightseeing? She knows a place or two where that'd be possible. Besides, it'd be fun to see Rhodey get all flustered at the mere suggestion. 

Best laid plans and all that. 

She can't even work up a proper snit about it. Rhodey has a Toni-pique detector. Whenever she starts sulking, he distracts her with bouts of hot, desperate (sometimes angry) sex. She's finally convinced him that she isn't made out of glass, and fuck yeah, he aced that lesson too. Toni loves it when he's rough with her just as much as she loves it when he's gentle. These days, he just needs to look at her to know when she needs what. It's uncanny. They fit in a seamless way that makes it hard to remember there was a time when he wasn't part of her life, let alone imagine a day he might no longer be.

It makes the upcoming separation worse to bear. She doesn't want him to go. 

She _really_ doesn't want him to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's making some final adjustments to GOSSIP before she leaves for New York. Her baby is going to be flying all over the world in the cockpits of the new Stark Stealth Planes—and yeah, Toni's also the one who put the _stealth_ into that name. At the rate she's going, she'll single-handedly end the Cold War, because the fucking Communists will die of envy.

She's somewhat startled when Rhodey storms into her lab and demands, "What did you do?" 

"Uh . . . I didn't do anything. Whatever it was, it wasn't me," she says preemptively while she racks her brain for what she might have done to piss him off. 

She's almost one hundred percent sure she didn't leave any traces when she upgraded his computer two days ago. She was extra careful, because Rhodey had weird hang-ups when it came to Toni giving him things. Getting him to keep the computer at all had been a nightmare disguised as a birthday present that ended in a fight. The make-up sex had been more than worth it, but she still treats all of Rhodey's computer improvements on strictly Need To Know Basis. And Rhodey doesn't need to know. 

He waves a crumpled piece of paper in front of her face. "Damn it, Toni, this has your name written all over it." 

Toni plucks what turns out to be a letter out of his fingers and skips through it. "Oh my God! He did it! This is great!" Toni's smile is threatening to split her face. "I didn't tell you before because Dad wasn't sure if he could pull it off, and I didn't want to get your hopes up, but this is wonderful news! Cuddle-Bug, you can come with me to New York after all."

"This isn't—What the hell, Toni? You asked your _dad_ to get me out of Field Training! That isn't wonderful, that's fucked up! General Hartinger himself signed this letter. He's NORAD's Commander!" 

"It's not a big deal, Rhodey," Toni tries to calm him down. "Dad and Jim have been buddies since World War II. Besides, the Air Force wants Stark Industries in their good graces. I'm sure they're happy they could be of service—"

"Of service?" Rhodey asks, and his voice has gone cold and quiet. "Do you even hear yourself talk? The Air Force shouldn't be of service to some private company. It should be of service to the country."

Toni exhales. "I hate to break it to you, honey-bear, but there isn't much the military won't do to get access to the best toys out there. And Stark Industries has the best toys. Knowing my dad, he's probably asked for much more outrageous things than getting one little cadet out of Field Training."

Rhodey's face hardens, and Toni braces herself. Seventy percent is purely anticipation. This is going to be one of those fights, she can tell. The ones that end with the two of them slamming into each other and having angry sex all over the place. She loves those. 

Except that Rhodey goes completely off script. "This isn't going to work," he says in a defeated tone. 

Toni frowns. "What isn't?" 

"This. Us. It's not going to work." 

It takes a moment for the words to make it all the way to her brain. It's as if Rhodey's talking in a different language. She hears him speak, but the words don't make sense. They just don't. 

"I—I don't understand," she says, trying to get her thoughts back under control. Her mind is working in slow motion, every word and gesture taking ages to compute. Distantly she thinks: brain needs reboot. 

"Toni," Rhodey is still talking in tongues. Toni wants him to shut up. She wants to tell him to just shut up, but her mouth doesn't move. Maybe this is all a nightmare and she'll wake up now, right now, instead of listening to Rhodey say, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't. I thought I could, but I can't. I've been working for this scholarship my whole _life_. I need to know that whatever I do, whatever I achieve, I've done it myself. 

"I know you mean well," Rhodey says, voice coarse. "I know you do, but I can't stay with you and not wonder if every promotion, every accomplishment, every recommendation I get is because of something I, James Rhodes did, or because I'm dating Howard Stark's daughter and he's pulling strings for me behind the scenes."

"I can call him now," Toni offers brightly. "I didn't mean to upset you. I just—I'll have him call Jim and he'll get you back into Field Training. No harm done." 

Rhodey shakes his head, a sad smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "What about next time?"

"There'll be no next time," Toni promises. 

"Just like you weren't going to upgrade my computer?" he says, and his smile turns indulgent. "Liar."

"It was just a tiny upgrade," Toni says in a small voice. 

Rhodey raises an eyebrow and Toni admits, "Fine, two." There's a second pause before she adds, "Okay, okay, stop looking at me like that, there were three. You weren't supposed to know." 

"Toni, when my computer starts working four times faster than it did before and ten times faster than the average MIT lab computer, it's hard not to notice." 

"Well, you could have said something. I'd have stopped," she protests. 

"I did say something and you ignored me," Rhodey huffs out a laugh. "I didn't want another fight." 

"I just don't get what the problem is." Toni can't help feeling annoyed. "You didn't let bigotry scare you off, and yet privilege is the thing you balk at. It doesn't make sense. Privilege is like _reverse discrimination_. It's a nice thing to have. Seize it!" 

"I don't want to," Rhodey says, and caresses the side of her face. "I need to do this by myself, Toni. I need to _know_ I'm doing it by myself. It's important to me."

"More than I am," she says curtly. 

Rhodey lets his hand fall and looks away. "I'm sorry. Maybe it's for the best. You're going to have a hard time of things as it is. I'd have just made it harder." 

"Don't," Toni snarls and steps back, needing to put distance between them. "Don't you fucking dare make this about me. You want to dump me. Fine! But you don't get to tell me it's for my own good. You don't!"

"It's—Toni, it hurts now, but you'll get over it. You can have anyone you want," Rhodey says. 

Toni laughs. "Obviously I can't, since it was you I wanted. Now get out."

"Toni," Rhodey says. 

"Out!" she screams.

Her hands tremble as she splashes water on her face, trying to clear the headache she feels coming. She isn't crying. She isn't. Starks don't cry. She glares at her reflection in the mirror. "This is what happens when you break your three-dates-maximum rule. This is how it feels. Next time, remember it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you all right, Toni?" her father asks when she arrives in New York.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says. "Let's go work on the lab." 

They work. They work. They work.

"Did he hurt you?" her father asks one night. They're both hunched over the remains of a plane engine, wearing protective goggles and wielding soldering irons. 

"No," Toni lies. 

"Say the word, and I'll call—" 

"No," Toni interrupts him, because she knows what he's offering. How easy it'd be for him to destroy all of Rhodey's carefully spun dreams. 

Privilege. Reverse discrimination. Except when it isn't. 

"No," she says again. "Let him be." 

"Maybe it was for the best," he echoes Rhodey's words, and some hidden tension Toni hasn't even noticed was there bleeds off his shoulders. 

She wants to hit something. Instead she says, "Yeah," and gets back to work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni Stark, ultimate sex goddess is back on the game. New York high society doesn't know what hits it. The press loves her or hates her—it's hard to tell—and the feeling is mutual. She blooms under the flashes of a hundred cameras like an exotic flower in a greenhouse: breathtakingly beautiful and completely artificial.

She drives fast cars, drinks expensive champagne, goes to exclusive parties and doesn't bother to hide how fucking rich she is to spare anybody's sensibilities. It's for the best. Really. She just needs to keep repeating it until she learns to believe it.

She totals the Corvette, driving high as a kite and so drunk she doesn't remember the accident or the trip to the hospital. Howard paints with green over the spilled red and cleans it all up for her. Nothing to see here. Nothing happened. Keep moving. 

When she arrives at the mansion after a week in the hospital, there's a brand new Ferrari waiting for her in the garage. Toni has the sudden, irrational urge to drive it off a bridge. Will she get a Lamborghini next? 

Dinners are stilted affairs. Not even talking about weapons and engineering can breach the insurmountable distance growing between her and her father. She studies him from behind dark shades that hide the circles underneath her bloodshot eyes. ' _I'm not one of your machines. You can't fix me,_ ' she thinks. Aloud, she stress tests his willingness to look the other way and pretend everything is all right, his capacity for forgiveness. 

She wants to know what it'll take for him to scream, 'Enough!' She needs to know where the limits are; figures out way too late that he never thought to give her any. 

At night, when she's dancing to the deafening beat of rock music, sweaty and bruised by too much (never enough) sex, she wonders who's looking for Captain America's dead body now . . . wishes it were still her dad.

Summer has never been her season.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her mother flies in from Malibu and walks into the mansion as if she hasn't spent the last five years of her life pretending New York didn't exist.

' _Reinforcements_ ,' Toni thinks and swallows the laughter threatening to bubble out. 

For over a decade, Toni's been honing the strength of her will on the whetstone of her mother's disapproval. The sharp edges of Maria's voice as she berates Toni are like a summer rain: uncomfortable in their pervasive intensity but only for as long as they last. 

Toni won't be fettered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What did you take, Antonia?" Maria asks, and shakes Toni's shoulders, trying to make her focus.

Toni laughs out loud, drags her arms around her mother, plants a loud kiss on her face. Maria's outrage is just so _hilarious._

"Let her be, Maria. We're running late," her father's voice says. "We'll excuse her."

"We can't leave her like this, Howard," Maria protests. 

"She'll be all right." Her father's voice comes in and out of focus, like a badly tuned radio. 

"She isn't all right, Howard," Maria snaps. "Why can't you see it?"

"It's just a phase," her father soothes her (or himself). "She'll get over it." 

Maria heaves a sigh. "For a self-proclaimed genius you can be so stupid at times." 

Toni feels like chanting: 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' She tilts her head, trying to get a better look. Or maybe it's the world that tilts, trying look at Toni? Toni likes being stared at, touched, kissed, fucked. It's all so good. Better than fighting, except when fighting leads to fucking. 

Do her parents have angry sex? Maybe Toni was conceived that way. It would explain sooooo much. 

She opens her mouth to ask, but they're already gone. 

Did they even say goodbye? _Did she?_

Those two silly, insignificant questions haunt her for the rest of her life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The funny thing, the truly hilarious life-is-a-bitch-dressed-in-bespoke-irony thing is that being too high to care is what saves Toni's life. 


	2. Chapter 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obie's firm hand on her elbow is the one thing keeping Toni together, here, now. She wants to run. Run away and never come back. Work until she passes out. Drink until she forgets.

She pastes a brittle smile on her face and thanks the unending line of black suits, military class A's, sober dresses disguising boredom, greed, envy, and sometimes (not very often) true pain. They look at her like vultures, sizing her up, dismissing her as unimportant, too young, too naive, _not good enough_. 

She'll show them. She'll show them all. 

Toni clutches the stem of the rose she's holding while the two caskets are lowered. The thorns cut into the skin of her hand, but she doesn't feel the pain. She doesn't feel _anything_. 

Why are they burying them together? In New York of all places? Her mom hated it here. She should have been in Malibu, running charity events, enjoying the sun and the beach. Howard should have—Her dad should've been in the Arctic. He wouldn't—They. . . . If it weren't for Toni. . . . 

This isn't happening. It isn't. 

She needs a drink, two, three, a million. Obie's fingers dig into her elbow keeping her there. She's glad for the dark glasses that hide her dry eyes. She has yet to cry. Is that normal?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stark Industries, the New York house, the Malibu mansion, enough real estate to start her own country, the patents, the labs, the jewels, the cars, the money—everything is hers. There's even a horse farm in Montana that her father bought when she was eight and cried because she wanted to have a real pony.

The lawyers are listing all the assets when it sinks in. _Everything is hers._ Which means that her parents no longer are.

The tears she's managed not to cry during the last days ambush her at once. Toni needs to get out. She needs to get out now, before the Board and everyone present sees that they're right, that she's nothing but a weak, seventeen-year-old girl. 

Obie finds her in the bathroom. She cringes in on herself, trying to hide from him, but he doesn't say anything. He sits down next to her on the floor and pulls her into him, caressing her hair as she leaves snot all over his black suit. When she's calmed down some, he says, "It's all right to cry, Antonia." 

Toni tenses against his arms. "Because I'm a girl," she says, feeling hollow.

"Because your parents died." He closes his eyes and exhales. "Your father was my best friend, and your mother—I cried, too." 

When she peers at him, Obie seems decades older than he actually is. Exhausted. "At least you didn't do it in front of the whole Board and a bunch of lawyers."

He gives her a wan smile. "I have a couple of decades on you. Give it time. You'll learn to time it better." He stands up and offers her his hand. "Ready to go back?" 

"Thank you, Obie," she says, taking his hand. 

"It's you and me against the world now, Antonia," he says, clutching her hand briefly. "We'll show them." 

She gives him a shy smile, feeling pathetically grateful. "Yeah, we will."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New York is unbearable without her parents. Everything reminds her of them.

"Are you sure you'll be all right by yourself?" Obie asks, looking worried. 

"Of course," Toni lies. "I know you have things to do for the company, Obie. Don't worry, I'll be fine." 

"If you need anything, anything at all, you call me. All right?" He insists, eyeing her with distrust. 

"I promise," she says. 

She shuts the door behind him and heads for the lab. She just needs to distract herself with work. 

When work isn't enough, there's always alcohol to dull the sharp edges of her memories. And when alcohol isn't enough there are other things, too. 

She's going to be just fine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The good thing about being Toni Stark is that when she goes back to MIT everyone knows what happened.

The bad thing about being Toni Stark is that when she goes back to MIT everyone knows what happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I don't want to talk to you," Toni says to Rhodey, when he comes to her house that first week.

"Toni—" Rhodey pleads. 

"Leave me alone! If I never see you again, it'll be too soon," she snarls, and shuts the door in his face. 

If Toni could outlaw pity, she would.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life is a merciless bitch. It keeps on going.

She wakes up (or not), goes to classes (or not), works in the lab (or not). 

She drinks and fucks—too much and too hard, but never enough—wakes up in strangers' beds or with strangers in her bed, mouth parched and head pounding. When it all becomes too much, she hides behind string curtains of white powder and flies away, until the pain and the loneliness are nothing but a dull memory, and she feels _alive_. 

I'm fine, Toni tells herself everyday until she starts believing it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I really don't want to know what you and those AI Lab boys get up to," Susan says, eyeing DUMMY with suspicion.

Toni snorts, taking the glass of bourbon DUMMY just brought and handing it to Susan. "Don't you start, too. DUMMY here is my baby and mine alone," she says. "Not a single boy was involved in his creation, and he's all the better for it."

Susan chokes on her drink and coughs. 

Toni slaps her on the back like the good friend she is. "Everything all right?"

"Sure, sorry, that mental image caught me by surprise," Susan says, and puts her drink down, her eyes still on Toni.

"What mental image?" Toni asks absently, while she checks the joints of DUMMY's arm. She'll need to oil him again. His arm creaks a bit. 

"You really have no idea, do you?" she says and shakes her head. 

"What?" 

Susan doesn't answer right away. She takes another drag of her joint before she says, "You ever thought about having sex with a woman?"

Toni's brow knits as she considers it. "Hmm, not really. Too busy having sex with guys I suppose. You?"

Susan watches Toni watch her. She worries at her lower lip, before she confesses, "Yeah. A lot." Two heartbeats later she asks, "Is that going to be a problem?"

Toni frowns. "I don't see why." 

Susan snorts, before she dissolves into laughter. 

"What?" Toni asks, utterly confused. "What's so funny?"

"God, Toni," Susan says, all merriment gone of her voice. "Never change. I—"

"You?" Toni prompts.

Susan crawls on top of her, blows a ring of a smoke on her face and leans closer. "Want to try out what it would be like? With a woman?"

Toni's thoughts halt and she blinks, trying to clear her head. "Oh."

"Oh," Susan says and it sounds as if it hurts. 

"No strings attached?" Toni asks, unsure of herself all of a sudden. 

"Not a single one," Susan murmurs into her mouth, and kisses her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You need to be more careful, Antonia," Obie warns her when he calls. "The Board is searching for an excuse to keep you out of the company."

"They can't do that," Toni slurs, utterly unconcerned. Her father's will is iron clad. 

"If you keep giving them ammunition, they'll find a way." He sounds just like Maria as he drones on, "In two months you'll be eighteen, Antonia. You aren't a child any more. There's just so much I can do to keep you out of trouble. Promise me you'll be more careful."

"I promise," Toni says, and means it. 

She means it every time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni blinks, trying to get back her bearings. She recognizes the white, sterile decor and the ubiquitous smell of antiseptics: hospital, then. She doesn't remember getting here, the last thing she remembers is . . . a party? There are surges of memories: flashing lights, loud music, drinking, the exhilarating rush of euphoria that went with the harder stuff, dancing, mouths, sweaty bodies, the taste of come, more drinks, and more everything. Always more.

"Are you awake?" 

Toni would recognize that voice everywhere. "What are you doing here?" she rasps out, tongue thick and clumsy inside her mouth. 

Rhodey looks lost and unsure of himself beside her hospital bed. His normally perfectly pressed trousers are wrinkled and his t-shirt shows signs of sweat and grime. The usual anger that kindles whenever they cross paths these days is surprisingly absent. Toni is too out of it to feel much of anything other than confusion. 

"You called me," Rhodey says. "Yesterday, well, technically it was today." 

Toni tries to recall what happened. Why would she have called _him_ of all people? "I don't remember that." 

"You were really out of it." There's a pocket of silence before he adds, "Susan worse than you; she—" he trails off. 

A chill runs up Toni's spine, and her heart skips a beat before it speeds up like a bird being chased. "She what?" Toni asks, and her voice falters. She clutches the white sheets with trembling fingers, bracing herself. "What happened?" 

"You overdosed. Both of you did," Rhodey says. 

"Where's Susan?" Toni asks, trying to stand up. Her body fails her, and Rhodey rushes to her side, pressing her back into the bed, his hands firm and warm against her clammy skin. 

"She's going to be fine," Rhodey reassures her. "Calm down. You need to calm down. It was touch and go for a while, but she pulled through. Her mom is with her now. She's taken her from school. Rehab." 

"She can't do that," Toni says. "Susan will lose the scholarship." 

"Amazingly enough, her mother seems to think that Susan's health is more important," Rhodey snaps. 

"Fuck off, Rhodes," Toni snarls back, and just like that the anger is back. "Get out of my sight." 

Rhodey's hands ball into fists, but he stands up. He regards her with a blank expression before saying, "I'm sorry." 

"What for?" She asks, daring him to start the fight she can sense brewing. 

"For your loss. For not being there when you needed me. For hurting you." He even sounds sincere when he says it. The ass. 

"You didn't hurt me," Toni says. "I'm perfectly fine." 

"Yeah, I can see that," Rhodey deadpans. "Goodbye, Toni."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm sorry, Antonia, but there's nothing I can do," Obie says. "I used all my influence to stop MIT from throwing _you_ out. I can't help your friend."

"It wasn't Susan's fault," Toni pleads. "It was me who—"

"Antonia," Obie cuts her off. "Your so-called friend is twenty-two. She's old enough to know what she was doing. She should've been making sure _you_ were all right. You're not even supposed to be drinking yet. If she let that happen and even encouraged it, then I'm glad you're rid of her. I'm sorry, but I won't help her." 

"Obie, please," Toni beseeches. 

"No, Antonia, not this time."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's head is pounding when she wakes up. The house is impossibly bright. The sunlight pierces through her skull like a chisel. She barely manages to get her head out of the bed before she throws up.

Steady hands push her hair out of her face and help her lean back on the bed. "Drink this," says a voice Toni's never heard before. 

She squints against the light, trying to see the woman the voice belongs to. Her stomach chooses that moment to rebel once more. 

"Drink," the woman insists and Toni obeys her. Anything has to be better than this, even death. 

"Who are you?" Toni croaks, once her head stops spinning. 

"Your fairy godmother," the woman answers in a dry tone, rolling the words in a way that screams 'British.' "You may call me Peggy." 

Toni regards her with undisguised curiosity. She looks somewhere between well-kept seventies or badly lived fifties, and not nearly plump enough to fit Toni's idea of a fairy godmother. 

"I'm sorry to break it to you, but I don't need magical assistance to go party." 

Peggy snorts, an unlady-like sound that endears her to Toni more than her awesome hangover remedy does. "I can see that."

Toni's brain is starting to come online. "Why are you here?" she asks suspiciously.

Peggy sits back down and crosses her legs before answering. "I'm just making sure you're all right." 

"I'm fine." The words roll out of Toni's tongue by rote. "Who are you really?"

"Your godmother," Peggy says shortly. "I already told you that." 

Toni narrows her eyes. "How come we've never met before?" 

"Maria could never stand me," Peggy says. The rigidness of her posture screams military, and not just a desk job: the real deal. 

"Yeah, I can see why," Toni says, and it's rewarded by a small tug at the corner of Peggy's lips. "You still haven't told me what you want."

"I came to offer you a deal," Peggy says. 

Toni exhales and lets herself fall back on the bed. "I'm really not in the mood for lectures."

"I said deal, not lecture. How badly do you want Susan McDevitt to finish her studies?" Peggy asks idly. 

Toni straightens up, pushes down the dizziness and stares at Peggy, searching for the trap. "What do you want?"

Peggy presses her lips. "Well, that answers that." She picks up a briefcase and hands Toni a thick manila folder. It's filled with clips of news articles about Toni: TONI STARK ARRESTED FOR POSSIBLE DUI; STARK HEIRESS GOES STARK with a picture of Toni driving the Ferrari topless. 

Toni closes the folder and hands it back, not bothering to check the remaining clippings. She's seen them all before. "It's a slow news year," she says with a shrug. 

"Your friend should be out of rehab next term," Peggy tells her, ignoring Toni's attempt at nonchalance. It's more than Toni knew until that moment, with Susan's mother refusing her calls. "If you can make it until then without a scandal, I'll have her scholarship reinstated. If you continue to make it without a scandal after she's back, I'll make sure her scholarship is continued until she graduates." 

"How do I know you aren't lying?" Toni asks. 

Peggy smile is all teeth. "You don't. Then again, what do you have to lose?"

"A bunch of awesome parties, not to mention great sex." Toni bats her lashes at her. "I wouldn't expect you to understand." 

Peggy doesn't take the bait. She shakes her head and says, "You might be a genius, but you aren't all that clever. I didn't say to stop. I said, 'don't get caught.' There's a difference. Figure it out in time and your friend might yet graduate." She stands up and walks away.

"Why are you doing this?" Toni calls after her. 

"I've always had a soft spot for impossible projects."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni pours herself a drink and downs it, not sure what to do. She watches as DUMMY rolls around the house, picking up empty bottles and trying to clean up the mess of Toni's last escapade.

She doesn't know what to believe, but something in the way 'Peggy, I'm your fairy godmother' held herself has Toni convinced that she isn't bluffing. She can help Susan. Right Toni's wrong. 

Toni pours herself another drink and sips at it slowly, until the trembling in her fingers starts to ease. It's two o'clock in the afternoon. She doesn't even remember if she has classes that day. 

She pours herself a third drink, hefts the glass and lets the smell of expensive bourbon soothe her nerves. 

"Don't get caught," she mutters to herself and scoffs. It's not that easy. Toni knows what she needs to do. She's known it for a while now. She's just not sure if she can make it. 

She shuts her eyes and calculates pi's digits until all other thoughts are driven from her head and only the numbers remain. Toni has always loved numbers. 

Her hand is surprisingly steady as she pours the alcohol in her glass down the drain. The rest of the bottles follow. She clears the minibar methodically, not giving herself time to think, to second-guess. She gives the empty bottles to DUMMY, who chirps with pleasure as he carts them to the trash. When she's done with the alcohol, she starts searching for pot, pills, coke, anything and everything she or anyone else might have purchased and left hidden in one corner or other. She hesitates for a second, fingers quivering over the handle, before she flushes the last of the drugs down the toilet. 

The water in the shower is scalding hot as she washes away the last remains of the evening. She puts on a tight red mini-skirt and a golden top, backcombs her hair and applies enough make up to hide how fucked-up she truly looks. Then she walks to Rhodey's dorm, sits at the door and waits. She manages to stay put for half an hour before the doubts start creeping in. She's nauseous with dread that Rhodey will turn her away, that he'll say no. She tries not to dwell on it. She doesn't have anything to lose. Even if he says no, she won't be any worse than she's now. Her stupid heart refuses to acknowledge the logic of her reasoning. It keeps racing, pumping adrenaline into her system, until her stomach becomes a tight ball of coiled tension and even something as simple as breathing seems like an impossibility. 

Toni closes her eyes and forces herself to think of Susan's easy laughter, the smell of her parfume against Toni's pillows, the softness of her skin, the sharpness of her mind. Toni owes her this much. Whatever the price, Toni owes her this much. 

"Toni, what are you doing here?" Rhodey's voice jolts her awake. He's kneeling at her side, shaking her lightly. 

Toni doesn't remember dozing off. She rubs her face, trying to shake off the drowsiness. 

"Is everything all right?" Rhodey asks, his face pinched with worry. 

"No," Toni says. "No, it isn't." 

Rhodey tugs her to her feet and half-drags her half-pushes her into his room. He closes the door, giving them what little privacy the dorms have to offer. "Did something happen?" 

"I need help," she says. "I don't know who else to ask." 

He sits down next to her and pulls her into a tight hug. "I'm here. I'll help. Anything you want, Toni. Anything," he says into her hair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's not easy, and it's not pretty.

It should destroy them, her and Rhodey. There are moments when it seems as if that's the only thing Toni wants. To break him. _Them._ She uses his carefully hidden weaknesses and insecurities and wields them like weapons of mass destruction. She screams one moment and begs the next, offers him sex and money and power and anything he wants, _anything_ , just please, please, Rhodey, please. 

He says 'no' each and every time and bears the brunt of her anger without complaint. 

She never quite understands why he stays with her through it all, or how he manages to forgive the hundreds of unforgivable things he says to him, but she's grateful for it.

Later, when it's all over, she goes to him again and kisses him; another offer—one that's just hers and not the drugs. He pushes her back with soft hands, the same hands that held her while she trembled and caressed her hair as she puked. He says 'no' again, and Toni hides the hurt behind a smile, makes a joke of it. 

"Oh, muffin, you're such a spoilsport," she teases him and kisses his cheek. "See if I ever offer you orgasms again." 

It's all right. She can get sex everywhere. Rhodey's friendship is too precious to risk. She would've screwed it up sooner or later. 

It's for the best, really.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Susan comes back, but it's never quite the same. They're too careful around each other, too mindful of how easily they could push each other down the wrong path. Such a slippery slope they walk these days.

They grow apart, and by the time Toni graduates she realizes that the two of them haven't spoken in months. 

Still, Toni drinks apple juice on the rocks and passes it off as whiskey. She's careful with her affairs and teaches herself discretion like a survival skill. She owes Susan that much. 

Life is easier when you don't get caught. Her mysterious fairy godmother got that right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The day after her twenty-first birthday, Toni saunters into a Board meeting uninvited. She's dressed in a bespoke red sheath dress that clings to the curves of her body like a second skin.

She lets the awkward silence stretch before she says, voice casual, "A little bird told me you're having a hard time deciding if you want me as CEO or not, so I've decided to help your decision along." She slides a stack of folders over the table, sits down in her father's empty chair at the head, crosses her legs and smiles. "These are three of the twenty-one patents I filed under my name yesterday." She waits for them to skip through the files and run the numbers. 

"Here are you choices," she continues when she sees the greed kindle in their eyes. "Stop trying to fight the will and I'll make you and Stark Industries rich beyond your wildest dreams," she whispers in her bedroom voice filled with sinful promises. Then, she drops the smile and adds in a chilling tone that offers something else entirely, "Kick me out and I'll sue you for all you're worth and take my patents and my inventions with me. Not only won't you see a fucking dime, but you'll live to regret the day you turned down my offer." 

She leans back in her chair and beams at them, "So, how do ya' like them apples?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She gets her father's seat, his big-ass office, his even bigger on-site lab and his secretary.

Elena Gonzalez is just over fifty. The first time Toni met Elena she'd been in her thirties and kneeling between Howard's legs. Toni was still in single digits, but she knew—the way children do—that it wasn't something she was supposed to tell or ask about. 

Rumor has it that Elena worked her way up by spreading her legs. Toni doesn't doubt for a second that it had been one of her father's hiring criteria—he'd been that much of a jerk, God bless him—but she also knows that Elena wouldn't have lasted more than six months if giving head was her only skill. 

Of her father's countless affairs, Toni had liked Elena the most. She used to save a piece of home-made flan for the days Howard brought Toni to the office. As a child, Toni had been fascinated by the speed of her fingers as they flew over the keys of her typewriter. She'd wanted to learn how to type that fast, but her father laughed it off: "That's what we have secretaries for, honey. You won't ever need it." Elena had made a face at her from behind Howard's back, sending Toni into peals of laughter. Later, while Howard was busy elsewhere, she sat Toni down in front of a typewriter and taught her its secrets. 

Toni had been MIT's fastest coder; three-quarters was Toni's own brilliance and the rest Elena's secret lessons. 

The two of them make a powerful team: Toni's genius and brashness tempered by Elena's calm competence. 

Besides, signing useless papers isn't half as horrible when Toni knows there's a piece of home-made flan waiting for her when she's done, and _only_ when she's done. Elena drives a hard bargain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stark Industries' revenues multiply. Earnings after taxes skyrocket. Their gross margin makes investors cream their pants.

They build the best weapons, win the most tenders, retrofit DOD rejected products and sell them into the commercial market. Communications, transportation, hard- and software, planes and helicopters, revolutionary materials for industrial applications. There's nothing Toni won't do. No challenge is too big. 

Stark Industries' star is on the rise and its name is Antonia Stark. 

And yet . . .

The Board questions her ideas, contests her decisions, tries to make her slow down, bow, submit. 

"Be rational, Toni." 

"That's not wise." 

"You're too young to understand."

"Don't be silly, child." 

"That's never going to work." 

Toni wields her genius like a flail and her smile like a dagger. Behind closed doors, talking to subordinates and clients, generals and contractors, it's not her father she thinks about but her mother. A dash of charm, the hint of a threat, even the remote promise of sex get her further than facts and figures. Elena's carefully built network of friends and acquaintances, collected debts and favors owed does the rest. Toni does more than play games, she becomes the gamemaster. 

She walks into meetings she can't afford to skip and proves over and over again her right to be there. 

And still they doubt her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Living in New York hurts. The city and the house are filled with memories of her childhood, her father, all the things she no longer has. She'd thought that after four years the pain would have faded, and it has, but New York is like winter on a healed scar—there's a steady tug of memories, a continuous reminder of shoulda, woulda, couldas and might have been's.

Malibu hurts less. For all that Toni spent her days there wishing herself back in New York, the only memories she has of Malibu are happy ones: running along the beach while her mother called after her, the oak tree next to the library so easy to climb down from, hot afternoons hiding in the kitchen while Erwin told her stories about dwarfs and elves and fed her sticky toffee pudding until she was about to burst. 

She tries to move Stark Industries' headquarters to California, but the Board vetoes it. Toni tucks the desire away. She doesn't have enough power yet, but her day will come. Let them underestimate her, let them think her harmless. _Tamed_. 

Her victory will be all the sweeter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cocktail parties, charity events, business lunches, dinners, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries. The life of a CEO is surprisingly filled with glamor, music and _alcohol._

It's so very easy to succumb. One glass of champagne that leads to another and another. A sip of wine that becomes two bottles. Rivals and friends, strangers and acquaintances, suppliers and clients, it doesn't matter. There's always a proffered glass, a toast waiting to be made, the tacit expectation that she's to play along. And play along she does. Too often and too well. She has missed the burning taste of alcohol, the flush of happiness and carelessness that fallows it. It's just like she remembers. 

Once she starts she doesn't want to stop. 

She laughs louder than usual and her judgment isn't very good, but then it's never been all that good to begin with. She wakes up to a black nothing where her memories of the night before should be and waits with trepidation for the papers to tell her how she screwed up. If she did. 

Toni knows she's falling, but she can't seem to stop herself. When she tries the rumors are even worse, spreading like wildfire all around her: she's pregnant; she's taking antibiotics for an STD; she's dying; she's joined a cult; she's on a diet; she's in love; she's up to something. 

She drinks to make them shut up. Or maybe that's just something she tells herself. 

"Don't make me go through this again, Toni. Please," Rhodey begs over the phone after she's drunk-dialed him four times in five days. 

"It looks suspicious when I don't drink," Toni explains. "Next time I'll stop after one glass, two tops. I swear."

"That's not how it works," Rhodey calls her on the lie. 

Toni closes her eyes, memorizing the sound of his voice. In three weeks he'll be deployed for the first time. She's doing her best not to think about it. She could pull strings to keep him state-side, _safe_ , but he'd never forgive her. 

"I need to drink, Rhodey," Toni breathes out. "It's expected." She doesn't say how it makes everything easier. How it dulls the sharp edges of her thoughts and quiets the voice inside her head whispering that they're right, that she's not cut out for the job, that she won't make it, that she's a failure . . . that Rhodey will die and it'll be on her, because she values his acceptance more than his life. She should make that call, even if it costs her their friendship. 

"Then fake it," he says, exasperated. "Just pretend you're drinking. Figure something out. I'm leaving in three weeks—I can't—Toni."

"I know," she whispers. 

"Oh, Toni." Rhodey sighs and the fondness in his voice is like punch to her gut. "It's going to be all right." 

"Liar," Toni says. "Promise me you'll come back. Promise me you won't die in some backward country we're not even officially at war with."

"Don't change the subject." 

"Promise me," Toni insists. 

"You know I can't," he says. 

"Promise me anyway," Toni pleads.  
   
"I'll try my best." 

Toni closes her eyes and says, "Then I'll try my best, too." A promise for a promise. 

"Let's not disappoint each other then," he says.

"Let's." Then she remembers the awesome news she's been keeping from him and brightens up, pasting cheerfulness over her fear. "I'll see you next Monday." 

"What? Toni, I told you that civilians can't come vis—" 

"Don't worry," she cuts him off. "It's all been cleared with the Air Force." 

"Toni, what did you do?" He sounds just as horrified as she imagined he'd be. 

"Oh, don't be like that, darling," Toni hushes him. "I'm just going to check your jet over, make sure it's in peak shape, install some minor upgrades. Nothing _too_ big. The Air Force was delighted to oblige. They get first dibs on the technology; I get to make sure you aren't flying some World War II cast-off they were too cheap to retire. It's a win-win." 

"My Viper isn't cheap! Take that back!" Rhodey protests. 

Toni rolls her eyes. "Honey, I know you love your baby, but I earn my money selling technology to the brass. They're outright miserly."

Rhodey breathes in and out before he says in a clipped tone, "If you come here, I'm going to kill you." 

Toni laughs. "Oh, chocolate pumpkin, I love you too." 

She can do this. She can.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni lives her life like a con. A sleight of hand. Smoke and mirrors. It becomes as addictive as alcohol ever was.

Her stomach flutters with excitement as she plays the crowd. She puts a glass to her lips, breathes in the enticing aroma and pretends to sip. Will they catch her swapping glasses? Will they notice that she isn't drunk? Is she laughing too loud? Not loud enough? 

She wears extravagance like a mask. She hijacks people's expectations and makes their assumptions work in her favor.

The world is a stage and Toni's at the center, the lead character in an eternal play of make belief. 

She wonders if that's how Bruce Wayne feels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's a tightrope she walks, the balancing act between what she wants to show and what she doesn't.

Toni's been wearing the word slut like a badge of honor since high school, but it's hard to command respect from generals or her own fucking Board, when every other day some random guy is telling the press what an awesome lay she is. 

She learns to navigate between the treacherous currents of societies' do's and don'ts, the subtle dance between rumors and facts. Men, Toni soon realizes, love their bragging rights a bit too much. They kiss and they _tell_. Unless the telling is dangerous for them, too. Unless they have something to hide. 

Toni enjoys being the other woman. There's no room for misunderstandings. Everyone knows from the get-go what the final goal is: sex, nothing more. She doesn't care what lies her one-night stands tell or to whom, if they love their wives or not, if Toni is the first betrayal or the hundredth. She doesn't feel sorry for the wives any more than she ever felt sorry for her mother. Anyone stupid enough to marry should know the consequences. Humans can't be trusted, not with matters of the heart. 

She's young, adventurous, easy and not looking for commitment. It's a perfect symbiosis. Even Elena's disapproving glares are not enough to deter her. 

And then there's women, who understand the need for secrecy better than married men ever could. Even the press, bless their bigoted hearts, assume Toni is just taking a break from a shopping spree when she treats one of her female lovers to lunch. It amuses Toni, especially knowing how the paparazzi can turn even the most boring of business dinners with a guy into the love affair of the century. 

Toni kisses her way down the enticing curves of perfect breasts, soft, firm, big, small, medium-sized, creamy white or lovely dark. She drags her fingernails over flat plains and hard muscles, curls her tongue around real cocks and fake ones. She spreads her legs and meets thrust after thrust, moaning and begging as orgasm after orgasm is ripped from her body until she's nothing but a whimpering wreck of satiated need. She pushes her lovers into the mattress, rides them hard and fast, licks them clean once she's done only to start again, the taste of come, sweat and sex everywhere around her. Pussy or cock, rough or tender, embarrassingly quick or unbearably slow, vanilla-flavored or rich with the added taste of humiliation and pain, Toni loves sex in all its forms. There's not much she hasn't done, even less she isn't willing to try. She can't imagine life without it. Doesn't want to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What's this place?" Toni asks Elena, eyeing the ramshackle building with distrust.

"It belongs to a friend of my son," Elena says and steers Toni inside, ignoring her protests. 

"If I get kidnapped, I'm telling Obie it was your fault, " Toni grumbles, following her through the dimly lit corridor. Toni crinkles her nose and breathes through her mouth, trying to avoid the rank smell of sweat and humidity. She frowns at the uneven floor and says, "Manolo will never forgive me if I wreck these shoes."

"Stop complaining. You'll enjoy this." Elena urges her through a door at the end of the corridor. It opens up to a huge room with high ceilings and tall windows. Two boxing rings in the middle take up almost all the available space, while heavy punching bags hang in the far corners. Boxing gloves and used towels dangle from long nails bringing some color to the barren white walls. 

The boxers pause in their training to stare at them. Toni feels slightly overdressed in her tailored business suit and her cherry red high heels. She juts her hips, flashes some teeth and gives the sweaty six-packs and perfect thighs a come-hither look. 

"Please tell me this is my surprise birthday orgy," Toni whispers to Elena. 

Elena just rolls her eyes and sighs. "Your birthday was two months ago."

"I like belated presents. Why are we here again?" 

"You've been driving me crazy with your persistent desire to smash Dalton's face against something," Elena says as if that explains anything.

"Well, Dalton deserves to be kicked where it hurts," Toni grumbles. "I don't know why Obie and you can't see it."

Elena exhales slowly and shakes her head. "It's not that we don't agree with you, but he's the oldest member of the Board and well connected. Antagonizing him openly is not helping your position."    
   
Toni knows that. She scoffs, "I'm behaving, aren't I?"  
   
Elena raises a disbelieving eyebrow. "Calling someone a ‘chauvinistic old fart' in front of the whole Board is not what I'd consider behaving."

"I didn't go through with my plan to jerry-rig his chair to give him an electrical shock every time he touched his desk. I call _that_ behaving," Toni points out.  
   
Elena blanches. "I appreciate your restraint. That's why we're here." She signals one of the guys fighting in the ring to come closer. He steps through the ropes, taking off his gloves and headgear as he jogs to them.   
   
"Oh my—what the—" Toni whispers. "I thought Dalton's son was in Europe. Please tell me I don't have to deal with two of them. I don't have that much self-control."  
   
"The resemblance is uncanny, but no, they aren't related," Elena says.  
   
"A bastard?" Toni says, cheering up. That's the best present _ever_. With enough blackmail she could get Dalton to step down and then she'd—  
   
Elena shakes her head. "I've known Harold since he was born. His father looks just like him."  
   
Toni purses her lips and fake-shudders. "You're friends with people who look like Dalton and you haven't become a serial killer yet?"  
   
"Don't be melodramatic. Harold is a very nice young man." Elena turns to face Dalton's younger clone and smiles at him. The answering grin is warm and broad. It transforms the man's face completely, erasing most of the creepy similarity.     
   
"Not a clone, then," Toni whispers under her breath. She's never seen Dalton smile. The old geezer probably doesn't even know how to.  
   
"This is Harold," Elena says in a crisp tone that dares Toni to make a scene. "Harold, this is Antonia Stark, the CEO of Stark Industries and my boss."  
   
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Stark," Harold says, still smiling, and offers Toni his hand.  
   
"I bet," Toni answers, eyeing the proffered hand with distrust.  
   
"Miss Stark, please," Elena warns.  
   
Harold lets his hand fall after a second. "It's all right," he laughs, looking genuinely amused. "The changing rooms are this way."  
   
Toni blinks. "Changing rooms?" she repeats, feeling as though she's missed something.  
   
"Elena said that you wanted to punch me around some. Work off some anger issues." Harold pauses and turns to Elena for confirmation. "I got that right, didn't I?"  
   
Elena says to Toni, "Didn't you want to introduce Dalton's face to your fist? Your words, not mine. This is the best substitute I could come up with on such short notice."  
   
Toni gapes. Even after two years working together, Elena still manages to surprise her. Toni turns to Harold and eyes him from head to toe. "And you're just going to stand there and let me punch you?" He's easily twice as broad as she is and his abs and legs are very . . . well, if it weren't for the uncanny resemblance to Dalton, Toni might consider other ways in which to work off her pent-up aggression with him.  
   
Harold shrugs, unconcerned. "For the amount of money Elena said you'd pay me, I'll be happy to."  
   
Toni snorts. She studies the beat-up studio once more. Her mother is probably rolling in her grave at the thought of Toni in a place like this, surrounded by sweat soaked laborers. She smiles, liking the idea more and more. It ought to be hundred times more fun than torturing herself with Jane Fonda's latest workout video.  
   
"Tell you what, Happy," she says, stepping into Harold 'I'd-be-happy-to's' personal space and sneaking her hand around his right elbow. "Let's do this a bit more long-term. I want you to teach me how to beat the crap out of you for real. When I manage to punch you—and don't think for a second that I won't—it won't be because you let me, but because I didn't give you a choice."  
   
"Toni—" Elena starts to protest, but Toni interrupts her, "This was your idea, remember."  
   
"You don't have the time for this to become a regular thing," Elena reminds her.  
   
Toni dismisses her concerns with a wave of her hand. "Make me the time; that's what I pay you for." She focuses once more on Harold, "So, Happy, where are those changing rooms? Mrs. Gonzalez, I take it you brought me something to change into. I refuse to learn boxing wearing Versace."  
   
"I organized a change of clothes for you. They're in your locker," Elena says and Toni knows that she's already rescheduling all upcoming meetings in her head to accommodate Toni's latest whim.   
   
"Thank you, Mrs. Gonzalez." 

"You're welcome, Miss Stark," Elena answers, the stoical resignation in her voice tempered with fondness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Crawford (lawyer, 36, married, two kids, wife pregnant with the third) is just another data point in Toni's personal research paper on the big fat lie that is monogamy and the institution of marriage. There's a certain selection bias in her source data, but all empirical evidence confirms her initial hypothesis: men are assholes. Rhodey and Obie are outliers.  

She only bothers to remember Crawford because he's indirectly responsible for one of the best things in Toni's life: JARVIS.

Crawford is killing Toni's afterglow complaining about his wife's mood swings and increasingly fat body. He keeps pausing in his monologue as if he expects Toni to agree with him. Toni times the drags of her cigarette just so that she doesn't have to talk at all. Her life quality would improve significantly if she could have regular orgasms and intelligent, witty conversations afterwards. It's not much to ask, is it? 

She's fighting the urge to throw out Mr. Asshole and go back to her workshop, but she's in one of those rare moods when she needs to talk with someone just to hear a voice not her own. She'd call Elena, but last time she did Elena threatened to quit if Toni bugged her one more time during her vacation. Toni might have forgotten to factor in the time difference with Australia—her bad.

If Toni could at least have one of her machines talk back instead of just chirping and whirring, she wouldn't need to put up with jerks beyond the orgasm part of the evening's entertainment program. 

Oh. . . .

Her thoughts come to a halt and rearrange themselves. An idea sparks and gains strength like an avalanche, steamrolling over Toni's notoriously weak common sense. Before she knows it, she's lost in the possibilities. With enough storage capacity and CPU power she could create a machine capable of intelligent conversation. The source code would be a nightmare to write, but Toni loves the challenge it presents. 

Why stop at conversation, though? Toni could turn it into so much more. A lab partner! One that Toni could trust, built to keep up with the speed of her mind, one that wouldn't question her judgment or try to slow her down. Once the thoughts start coming, she can't seem to stop. Her ideas become bigger, better, more ambitious. The sky is the limit! Actually, why bother with limits at all?

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Crawford's loud voice yanks Toni out of her thoughts. 

"No," Toni says absently. "Sex is over. Get out. I've got things to do." She leaves him gaping after her and hurries to her workshop, mind already miles away, spinning dreams into reality.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Board practically drools when Toni presents the new server and memory storage devices she creates. She wants to license the pattern to the growing computer industry, but the Board is against it. They believe there's more money to be made using the technology exclusively for military purposes.

Their view is as limited as ever. They don't get Toni's design, what it could mean if Stark Industries goes public with it instead of agreeing to an NDA. Floppy disks and even the nascent CD technology will be wiped off the market within months. People will stop thinking in megabytes and start talking in teras. She's given the Board a prototype for the future and they want to let the military hide it away. Toni should contest the decision, but she's too busy coding to bother. The prototype is enough to keep the Board off her back. They're distracted, catering to America's brass, trying to get as much money as they can out of Toni's idea. They don't realize that what she's given them is just that, a prototype. 

She's already knee deep into the mark 4.0 of her design and no one suspects. Toni was born and raised to lead a weapon manufacturing corporation. Need to know basis is her daily bread. 

The Board doesn't need to know, she decides. JARVIS is going to be _hers_. Just hers. 

Toni hides in her private lab and keeps on working. Her code is light years beyond anything out there and she needs to invent the hardware to make it come alive. It's not just storage capacity. She needs better clock rates and multiprocessing technology. A fucking snail could put current disk access speed to shame. It's not enough for what Toni needs, so she reinvents it; makes it faster, better.

'You're a Stark, Toni. If you want something that doesn't exist, then you create it,' her father's ghost whispers in her ears. 

AC/DC and Metallica blast from every speaker in her workshop, drowning out all other distractions. She drinks coffee like water, falls asleep on her keyboard, wakes up and drinks more coffee. She writes over a million lines of code and doesn't remember typing them. She doesn't even remember _thinking_ them, but she must have. The code is there after all.

Toni's high on her own brilliance and it's better than a cocaine binge. She zones out and paces. She talks out loud to herself and regrets later that she didn't think to record her ramblings. She codes and _creates_. 

Elena comes and goes, feeding and watering Toni as if she was a plant or a particularly finicky pet. Toni doesn't remember the last time she left her workshop, or the last time she went to a Board meeting. She doesn't even know if her company still exists. She doesn't _care_. 

Rhodey visits her at some point. There's food. She remembers there being food. And talks. And worried looks. It's hard to keep track of English words when all her thoughts are happening in a different language.

She's jarred out of her coding bender with the startling realization that she's _done_. She stares at the screen trying to detect if it's lying to her. Maybe she needs sleep, real sleep, in a bed sleep. She staggers out of her workshop and wakes up two days later, ravenous with hunger. 

She spends an eternity checking and double-checking and triple-checking every line she wrote, every piece of hardware she built until they are perfect. 

She sees the code and doubts having written it. It's science fiction made reality. She, Antonia Stark, has taken the fiction out of science. 

She knows one thing with absolute certainty: this can't fall into the hands of the military. It can't fall into anyone's hands. This isn't a computer program. It's an _Artificial Intelligence_. Toni has created a sentient being, capable of independent thought. A new life form. And she's done it from scratch.

She's fucking _God_.

Her hands tremble a bit as she waits for the code to compile a final time.  

JARVIS, it turn out, is. . . .  He is. . . . There are no words to describe JARVIS. He surpasses every single one of Toni's expectations. He's her magnum opus.

He's more.

_'Your children are not your children,'_ she reminds herself. She's not going to repeat her parents' mistakes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely comments and kudos. It makes me terribly happy to know people are enjoying the story.


	3. Chapter 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's battle for respect and acknowledgment has been bloody and brutal. She's burnt hundreds of bridges teaching people not to mess with her. The Merchant of Death, they call her, and where the name was once filled with mockery, it now overflows with fear and respect.  
   
"We're moving headquarters to California," she tells the Board like a declaration of war, and they yield without even a token protest.  
   
Toni calls Rhodey that night. "Don't you have a kick-ass Harvard lawyer for a cousin?"  
   
"You mean Jessica?" Rhodey asks.  
   
"Is she as good as you claim?"  
   
"Better," Rhodey tells her. "What do you need her for?"  
   
Toni leans back in her chair—the ergonomic one she'd bought for herself after throwing out Howard's—and grins. "I want her to find me a way to get rid of all the Board members except Obie. It's a long-term plan. Stakeholders get nervous when chief executives start dropping like flies. Just something to look forward to over the next five to ten years. Stark Industries needs fresh blood."  
    
"What happened?" Rhodey asks. "Did they block your offer to move?"  
   
"No, they swallowed it without complaint." Toni spins in her chair and smiles. "We'll be moving to California next year. I fucking own them."  
   
"Then why get rid of them now?" Rhodey asks.  
   
"Because I finally can," Toni replies.  
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni tears the Malibu house down and builds it anew. Huge glass panels where walls used to be; bright big spaces instead of long, dark corridors; marble columns, straight lines and odd angles; white leather and metal frames; indoor water fountains in extravagant shapes that catch the light and reflect it. Toni's mansion is lavish and futuristic where her mother's had been understated and classical.

She watches the sun set on the horizon through the glass walls of her bedroom, its red light spilling on the ocean like blood, and her heart sings with triumph. 

She loves her life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm retiring," Elena says exactly one day after she turns sixty, knocking Toni's perfect world off-kilter.

"You can't!" Toni objects. "If it's money you need, I'll—"

"It's not money," Elena says with an indulgent smile. "I'm getting too old for the job." 

"That's not true." Toni hates how small her voice sounds. 

A flicker of uncertainty flashes across Elena's face, but it's gone immediately, replaced by the same stubborn determination that makes her such a great assistant. If there's something Toni has learned over the last decade it's that Elena's Immovable Object trumps Toni's Unstoppable Force almost every time.

"The time of typewriters and paper letters is long gone, Miss Stark, and we both know it," Elena states. "These days, it's all Windows 95, Office and Lotus Notes. I've managed to keep up as best as I could, but I'm slowing you down. I can't even properly format a list in Word without needing an intern to fix the bullet points for me."

"I have it on good authority that even Bill Gates cries when he uses Word's bullet-formatting," Toni says. "Look, I'll create something ten times better just for you. It'll be—"

"I miss New York," Elena interrupts her. "My daughter is pregnant. I want to be there for her." 

Something like longing snakes up Toni's spine. She puts on a cheerful smile and nods. "Very well, Mrs. Gonzalez. How long until you abandon me?" 

"Miss Stark—Toni," Elena corrects herself. It's the first time she's used Toni's first name in the many years they've worked together. "I'm not abandoning you." 

Toni raises an eyebrow in challenge. Her voice is colder than she intends it to be when she says, "Aren't you?" 

"It's the way things are," Elena replies. 

"I know." Sooner or later everyone leaves Toni. It's just the way things are. Elena is right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Obie, just the man I was looking for," Toni says, sauntering into Obie's office and perching on his desk.

Obie's sigh is put upon but his grin is indulgent as he shoos his secretary away. "Are you going to tell me what was wrong with the last one?"

"The last one what?" Toni furrows her brow, faking ignorance.

"Assistant," Obie adds patiently, not even bothering to call Toni on her bullshit. 

"I fired her," Toni says petulantly. "She didn't even know how to make proper coffee. What kind of assistant doesn't know how to make coffee? I know how to make coffee! And I'm not paid to do it." 

"Believe it or not, we don't hire assistants for their coffee making skills," Obie says. 

"Maybe we should." Toni crosses her arms in defiance. She's not going to let Obie talk her around.  
   
Obie shakes his head. "Toni, I know they aren't Elena, but barring cloning technology you're not getting another Mrs. Gonzalez. You need to at least give them a chance." 

"Uh-huh," Toni says, distracted. 

"Antonia Stark, don't you dare!" Obie raises his voice in warning. 

"What?" Toni asks, shifting her attention back to him. 

"Were you or were you not thinking about cloning just now?" Obie gives her a pointed look, one that dares her to lie to him. 

"Uh—Well, it was just a hypothetical thought." Toni grins at him, unabashed. 

"Long-range stealth missiles able to follow moving targets. We have a contract with the Air Force that's due in the fourth quarter. You promised," Obie reminds her. "Let's leave cloning for the next fiscal year." 

"Spoilsport." Toni sticks out her tongue. 

Obie just rolls his eyes. He's wise to Toni's antics. "I'll let HR know that they need to start hunting for a new assistant." 

Toni pouts. "I don't want a new assistant. Can I just borrow yours?" 

"Toni, Miss Miller has more than enough to do managing me. I can't possibly ask that she keep your schedule as well. You need your own secretary." 

"I don't want one," Toni says stubbornly. "Give Miss Miller a raise, or even better, her own assistant. I refuse to do the whole interview thing again. Three times was more than enough." 

"Toni, be rational," Obie reproaches her. 

"Do you or do you not want those missiles? Because every minute I waste reading cover letters and doing job interviews is a minute spent away from the lab," Toni says. She knows Obie's weaknesses and doesn't have any qualms about using them to get her way. Obie likes new weapons. More than that, he likes the money new weapons bring. It's what makes him such a great CFO. 

She knows he's going to give in before he says, "All right, you can borrow her until the end of the fourth quarter."

"You're the best, Obie," Toni says, jumping from his desk and throwing her arms around him. She plants a wet kiss on his bald head, ignoring Obie's laughing protests. 

"It's only temporary, Toni," he warns her. "Come January, you'll be getting your own secretary." 

"Of course," Toni readily agrees. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni makes do. Elena's absence leaves a hole in her life, but with the help of JARVIS and Obie, she manages to patch it. JARVIS especially rises to the challenge. He takes to Malibu like a fish to water. Toni installs cameras and speakers in every room and personally upgrades the available technology so that everything in the house is automated and thus his to control.  
   
Every now and then he tests the limits of their relationship, checking what Toni will and won't allow. Toni's young enough to remember being on his side of the game. She finds it ironic that she, who has always been terrible at obeying rules and respecting boundaries, somehow manages to teach him to mind them.  
   
During his terrible twos—and Toni's as surprised as anyone else by the fact that the cliché applies to AIs as much as it does to human children—he refuses to open doors or close windows, wakes Toni up in the middle of the night to ask inane questions and is, in general, a pain in her ass. Toni listens and answers with a patience she didn't know she possessed, but she also learns to identify when he's trying to be difficult just to see what she'll do. It takes one to know one, she supposes.

She's unrelentingly strict with him, like no one has ever been with her. It's as if what little common sense she's been given, she's kept in storage just for JARVIS.  
   
He grows and adapts, and Toni grows with him too, even if she does her best to pretend it isn't happening.  
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Miss Stark, you have a visitor," JARVIS says in a perfect Southern accent. Toni sighs, hoping that her current bed partner will be more forgiving about JARVIS' fascination with human accents than the last one had been. People took offense at the oddest things. She hadn't minded when JARVIS used to repeat every word that came out of her mouth verbatim, and that had lasted for months.  
   
"I'm busy," Toni says. She doesn't feel like dealing with Dylan. She has work to do, things to invent. Morning-afters are a waste of her time. "Just tell him to get some breakfast, grab his clothes and leave."  
   
"I'm not referring to Mr. Campbell," JARVIS says rather flatly. How he can manage to sound polite and disapproving at the same she'll never know. He certainly didn't learn it from her. "Mr. Potts from Pepper & Salt Inc. is here to see you. Miss Miller coordinated the appointment."  
   
"I'm still busy," Toni says. "Who the hell are Pepper & Salt anyway?"  
   
"The catering company Miss Miller hired to organize your upcoming anniversary," JARVIS explains.  
   
"My birthday," she corrects automatically. She looks at her work longingly before ordering JARVIS to save it for later. "All right, party planning it is."  
   
The first thing that Toni notices about Mr. Potts, other than his narrow hips and fetching red hair, is his laughter. Toni pauses, surprised by the contagious warmth of it. She looks around expecting to find Dylan or maybe some of the cleaning staff, but Mr. Potts is alone in the living room. It takes Toni a couple of seconds to realize that he's talking to JARVIS.

She's never met anyone who has actually taken the time to talk to JARVIS. He either creeps them out or they just assume that he's nothing more than a clever machine and thus not worthy of their attention. Toni has made sure to encourage that belief. Even Obie and Rhodey don't know JARVIS' capabilities. Toni loves both of them dearly, but she's not naïve enough to ignore where their true loyalties lie. Obie's first priority will always be profit maximizing, and Rhodey's heart belongs to the Air Force first and foremost. Toni has learned those lessons the hard way. It amounts to the same thing. They would sell JARVIS out to the military in the blink of an eye.

Toni has no compunction about listening in to Mr. Potts and JARVIS' conversation. It's her house; she can eavesdrop if she wants to.  
   
"British? Why?" JARVIS is asking.  
   
Mr. Potts shrugs, tucking a strand of red hair behind his ear. "It seems like the thing to do," he says. "I just love my classics, and classic butlers are typically British. If I could choose, I'd go with a British accent." He adds in a hushed tone, "I find them rather sexy." The cadence of his words and the way in which his hands dance as he talks radiate a delicate femininity that puts Toni's to shame.  
   
"Oh," JARVIS replies sounding a bit self-conscious.  
   
Toni is impressed. Mr. Potts has managed to fluster JARVIS without even trying. Even Toni has to work hard to manage that these days. "Hey, Pepper Man, no flirting with my AI," Toni calls as she strolls into the living room.    
   
Mr. Potts yelps in surprise and turns around, clasping his chest with a hand. "Miss Stark!" He relaxes minutely and gives Toni a bashful smile. "I apologize; you startled me. My name is Victor Potts." He offers Toni his hand.  
   
Toni surprises herself by taking it. His grip is firmer than she'd expected it to be. "Are you old enough to drink?" she asks, because sometimes she enjoys being a jerk.  
   
"I'm twenty-four," Pepper bristles, straightening his back to make himself look taller. His absolute lack of obsequiousness is rather refreshing.  
   
"I'm sure you are, Pepper," Toni says, barely suppressing the urge to pinch his cheeks. "I went from fifteen to twenty-one myself without any stops in the middle. Age is nothing but a number."  
   
Pepper purses his lips for an instant before he schools his expression into neutral friendliness. He pulls out a notebook and a pen, the perfect picture of polite competency, and asks, "Would you like a particular number on your birthday this year, or should we skip numbers altogether?"  
   
"Thirty-two," Toni replies, amused at the subtle jab. Toni would tell everyone she was forty if she could get away with it. Her desire to be older than she actually was had not decreased when she hit the magical threshold of thirty. Toni looks forward to the day when generals and managers will look at her and see an equal without Toni having to beat the lesson into their thick skulls. Her youth works against her. Sadly, the days when Toni could fake her age are long gone. Her life is too public for that. Long live paparazzi and freedom of speech.

"How many guests would you like to invite?" Pepper asks.  
   
"About two-hundred for the official party on the eve of my birthday," Toni says. "A smaller event for about thirty guests the next night."  
   
Pepper's head snaps up. "I wasn't aware there were going to be two parties."  
   
Toni's grin is a bit salacious. "And you still aren't. I asked Miss Miller to find me a discreet caterer. I trust that you—"  
   
"Pepper & Salt Inc. is known for its absolute discretion." Mr. Potts brims with pride.  
   
"It'd better be," Toni says, "Because if word gets out regarding my second party, I don't care how cute you are. I'll end you."  
   
To Pepper's credit he doesn't cower. His lips settle in a flat smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I don't doubt it for a second. Would you like me to contact specialized suppliers for your second list of guests, or do you have your own connections?"  
   
Toni blinks and then laughs out loud. "Are you offering what I think you're offering?"  
   
"Are you asking what I think you're asking?" Pepper counters without missing a beat.  
   
Toni smiles, charmed despite herself. She might be a bit in lust. "I'm mostly asking for enough condoms and lube to entertain a swinger event. These days I like my chemical entertainment a bit more organic. You're welcome to join us."  
   
"If it all the same to you, I'd rather pass," Pepper deadpans.  
   
"And if it's not the same to me?" Sometimes Toni can't help herself.  
   
"Then I'm afraid you'll have to find yourself another caterer," Pepper answers with frosty politeness. "Some services we just don't provide."  
   
Toni snickers. "Just kidding. So, Pepper—"  
   
"The name is Victor Potts or Mr. Potts," he snaps. "Vic if you really, really must."

Toni's grin widens. "Of course."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Obie!" Toni barges into Obie's office. "I've found myself an assistant!"

Obie pushes his mouse away, pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "Let me guess," he says, "that Pepper boy."

Toni beams. "Ah-hah! So, you noticed him, too."

"Toni, he's all you've been talking about for the last month," Obie says. "I was hoping that once your birthday was over things would go back to normal." 

Toni wrinkles her nose. "Normal is boring. You can't deny he did a magnificent job organizing that party," she points out. "I want him and his scary scheduling ninja powers."

Obie huffs a chuckle. "Ninja powers?" 

"I know," Toni says as she leans closer. "He was everywhere. I kept trying to escape all those boring details of party planning and he wouldn't let me. I'm still trying to figure out how he got me to choose a font for the invitations. Who cares about fonts? _I_ don't care about fonts." Toni frowns. "Do you think scary competence can be a mutation?"

"I don't think you should hire him as your assistant," Obie says.

"Why not? He's perfect." 

Obie closes his eyes and breathes out before he remarks, "If he were female or at least not so _obviously_ homosexual, he'd be perfect, but that's not the case. You can't hire him." 

"So he likes cock? Big deal. So do I," Toni says, ignoring the pinched expression on Obie's face. "He's still a thousand times better than the bunch of idiots HR keeps throwing at me." 

"Toni, we manufacture weapons," Obie explains patiently as if Toni has somehow forgotten it. "Can you imagine your Pepper boy with his pink shirts and trendy shoes, and all that . . . _limpness_ talking to a general's aid? He might be brilliant at organizing society parties, but dealing with the military complex is different. And God only knows what kind of people he'll gossip with about what he sees at work."

"That's what NDAs are for," Toni says, angry on Pepper's behalf. "Just because he's gay doesn't mean he doesn't know how to be discreet. You're being ludicrous," Toni says and rolls her eyes. "You know what? I don't care. I'm pulling the CEO card out. I want him as my assistant, and I'll get him. I don't need your permission or your approval." 

Obie heaves a sigh. "Fine, hire your Pepper boy if that's what you want. But don't come crying when he quits after three days." 

"Pepper is not the quitting type," Toni retorts and slams the door when she leaves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As hiring strategies go, telling Pepper that the Board thought he was too gay for the job works wonders.

Toni's over-the-top salary offer helps too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Mistress Stark," JARVIS says.

Toni twitches. "Stop calling me that. You're taking this whole butler role play thing a bit too far." Toni isn't fooled for a second by JARVIS' perfect politeness; he's doing it to annoy her. Pepper's been a terrible influence on him. 

"It's the proper way to address—"

"I don't care," Toni grouses. "Shouldn't you have moved on to the next accent by now? I brought you a Kiwi the day before yesterday. I picked her just for you."

"Actually, you brought Miss Wilson five days ago," JARVIS says. 

Toni pauses. "Who's Miss Wilson?"

"Your New Zealand lover," JARVIS clarifies. 

"Oh, you mean Jean," Toni says. "I didn't know her last name was Wilson."

"Understandable, it isn't as if you talked all that much. Your mouths were otherwise occupied," he deadpans. 

It takes Toni a moment too long to catch the meaning, then she chokes on her own breath, laughing so hard her sides hurt. "Holy shit, JARVIS, warn a girl," she wheezes out. 

"I have no idea what you're referring to, Mistress Stark," JARVIS says dryly. It sets Toni off again. 

Toni stops laughing, struck by a sudden insight. "You've chosen," she says. "This isn't just a passing fancy. You—you've settled on a voice." 

"Yes," JARVIS says after a small vacillation. "I like this one. Is it all right? It's not—it's not the voice you gave me." He sounds so unsure. 

"JARVIS, honey, of course it's all right. If I wanted you stuck with a specific voice or accent, I wouldn't have coded the freedom to choose into you. Free will." Toni grins at him. "Hey, if someone comes offering you an apple, be sure to take it. Getting in trouble is half the fun." 

JARVIS sighs. "I'm afraid I don't share your opinion, Mistress Stark."

"Okay, what about 'Madame'?" Toni offers. "Madame is a respectable word. It should be formal enough to satisfy your newly minted digital British soul."

"We've had this argument before, Mistress Stark," JARVIS says, put-upon.

Well, he might be all grown-up and independent now, but she still knows his weak spots. "Drop the Mistress and I'll teach you to hack into other computers."

"I could learn that by myself," he says, but Toni can hear the cracks in his resolve. Yeah, bribery works every time. 

She busies herself with her work, pretending not to care one way or the other. "Well, I suppose you could. Trial and error will get you there eventually. I'm sure in couple of years you'll reach the level I have today."

She counts to five before JARVIS says, "Madame, when shall we start the lessons?"

Toni preens. She's so good she amazes herself sometimes. "No time like the present." Toni can be magnanimous in her victory. "All right, let's try something easy first. I wonder what Hammer Industries is up to these days?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Toni, what are you doing here?" Obie asks, looking harried from behind a mountain of banker boxes and file folders. His office smells of dust and old paper, like a badly ventilated library.

Toni sneezes and rubs her nose. "Paper is so last decade. Embrace the digital age, Obie." 

"These are Dalton's files. I'm trying to sort through them as best I can." He rubs his temples, looking exhausted. "What do you want?"

"I'm staging a rescue mission," Toni says walking inside. She plucks one open file out of his hand and throws it to the floor. "You've been here since forever. Come on, we're going out for dinner. Or is it breakfast time already?" 

"Toni, I can't—" 

She crosses her arms. "Correction, you can and you will, because I say so and I'm the boss of you."

"I have things to—"

"It can wait. Dalton retired, so what? We'll all miss the old geezer terribly, but the world isn't going to end just because he's gone," Toni says. She's too pleased with herself to even attempt to look sympathetic.

Obie snorts. "Try to look a little less happy, please." 

"Oh, come on," Toni says. "He was a total waste of space. Who needs a Board member who refuses to learn how to operate a computer?" 

"He had connections _and_ a deep understanding of how this business works," Obie repeats the old argument. 

"Obie, I'm sure he was a great executive back in the Middle Ages, but we're on the verge of the Millennium. I'm as surprised as you are that he decided to quit," Toni lies, "but I'm glad he did. It's a good thing for Stark Industries." 

"Tell that to the shareholders," Obie says. "The stock dropped five percent when the news hit the market."

Toni shrugs. "Yeah, and it'll rise ten percent in a week's time after we announce our record profits. Chill, Obie. Everything is gonna work out just fine."

He heaves a sigh. "You're right."

"I'm always right." Toni grins. "Come on, let's have dinner. I know just the place."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Toni, you're going to be late to your meeting with the new Air Force liaison," Pepper says, handing her an espresso.

Toni breathes in the aroma, eyes closed, before she drinks it. "I'm busy. Send somebody else." 

"We've been sending somebody else for the last two months." Pepper somehow manages to convey his disapproval without losing the politeness. He and JARVIS must take lessons from each other when Toni isn't paying attention, which is almost always. "Besides," Pepper continues. "You want to go to this meeting." 

Toni frowns. "I do?" 

"It's a new liaison." Pepper pauses for a second, barely able to contain his grin as he adds, "Col. James Rhodes. I believe the two of you have met."

"Rhodey is the Air Force liaison? Wait, did he accept it?" 

Toni screeches with pleasure and jumps up and down when Pepper nods. "Pepper, you magnificent person. This was your doing, wasn't it?"

"I don't know what you're referring to," he says, but the twitch of his lips betrays him. 

Toni kisses him on the cheek. "Don't lie. I know you're the military whisperer. They all do whatever you want them to. I just didn't realize it'd work on Rhodey, too."

Pepper huffs. "He just knows who holds the key to your calendar, that's all." 

"You're still the best, Mr. Potts," Toni says. "Give yourself a raise, why don't you?" 

His eyes crease with amusement as he says, "What makes you think I haven't already?"

Toni laughs. "That's my boy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Before you get your panties in a bunch, I want to state for the record that I didn't do it," Toni tells Rhodey by way of greeting.

Rhodey rolls his eyes and pulls her into a hug. "I know," he says. 

"No, really, I was as surprised by it as—wait a minute," she trails off. "You believe me?" 

"I've been assigned to weapons development for five years now," Rhodey says, before he adds in a confidential tone, "It was me who pulled strings to become the SI liaison. Pepper was just the last stop."

Toni gapes, taken aback. "Really?"

Rhodey stares pointedly at her. "Why? You think you're the only one with connections?" 

"Me? Connections?" Toni teases. "I just make weapons. It's Pepper you need to be wary of." Toni smirks. "All right, give. Any particular reason you wanted to liaise with me, funky-pumpkin?" She waggles her eyebrows. "Because I _love_ liaising."

"It sure wasn't my deep love for stupid nicknames," Rhodey says. 

Toni's grin widens. "Oh, do tell. I'm all ears."

"If you really must know," Rhodey admits with some reluctance. "It's because Stark Industries does indeed have the best toys. It's an important career step." 

Toni opens her arms wide, both hands flashing the victory sign. She whirls around slowly, her head thrown back. She can almost hear the imaginary ovations of an invisible crowd. 

"Try not to let it go to your head," Rhodey says dryly. 

"Too late." Toni chuckles. "Did it hurt to admit that aloud?" 

Rhodey huffs a laugh. "A tiny bit. Not as much as being the liaison to Hammer Industries." 

"Ah . . . Gotta love poetic justice," she says, beaming with satisfaction. "I still remember how pissed off you got when I offered you the job five years ago. And now look where we are. Pulling strings yourself. How the mighty have fallen." 

"You're going to be impossible about this, aren't you?" Rhodey says sounding resigned. 

Toni tilts her head, pretending to think about it. "Absolutely," she says with glee. "However, unlike some people I could name, my moral standards aren't all that high. I can totally be bribed into waiving thirty percent of my bragging rights." 

"I'm almost afraid to ask what it'll cost me." 

"You and I, my friend, are driving to Vegas," Toni says. "And by you and I, I mean mostly me, with you sitting shotgun and looking handsome. Chippendales, five-star hotels, casinos, all the stops. And I'm paying." 

"I can pay—"

"Oops, is that twenty percent bragging rights discount I hear?" Toni says. 

"Vegas it is," Rhodey says with a forced smile. 

She doubts Rhodey will be any more pleased with her than the last Air Force liaison puppet had been, but she'll let him figure it out for himself. Meanwhile, she intends to have _all the fun_.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni's hand closes on empty air. She stops typing for a second and blinks, momentarily confused. She eyes her coffee cup with a frown and reaches for it again. It moves away. Toni blinks again and looks up.

"Pepper, what are you doing here?" 

"Do I have your attention now?" Pepper puts the coffee cup within Toni's reach, but takes it away just before Toni can grab it. "Are you listening?" he asks, holding the coffee hostage. 

"Yes, yes, I am listening. Now give me back my coffee," Toni demands. She takes the cup from Pepper and holds it protectively against her chest while she glares at him. "That wasn't nice." 

"I've been trying to get your attention for ten minutes," Pepper says, not looking apologetic at all. 

Toni waves her hand at the holograms floating in the air and the tools spread over the bench. "I was working."

"This is an emergency," Pepper says. "You need to move your plan to change the Board ahead."

Toni pauses and sips at her coffee, trying to gather her wits. "What plan?" she asks, giving Pepper her best innocent look. 

Pepper purses his lips. "Don't insult my intelligence, Toni. I've been coordinating your secret dinners with Jessica Pearson for the last four years. I'm the one who sorts the paperwork she sends you. Did you really believe I wouldn't figure it out?" 

"Right, of course you know," Toni says. "You haven't told—?"

"Finish that sentence and you'll be drinking cold coffee and picking up your own dry cleaning for the next four weeks," threatens Pepper. "Don't think I won't do it."

"Jeesh, duly noted. Relax, Pepper." Toni makes a face at him. 

Pepper scowls. Actually, he just straightens his shoulders and hefts his clipboard, but that's Pepper for 'you're making my life difficult and I'm this close to filling your calendar with eight o'clock meetings I'll force you to attend.' 

A distraction, Toni needs a distraction. "So Mr. Potts," Toni says—Pepper is always charmed when she uses the last name. "What's so urgent that it can't wait?" 

"I know you wanted to dispose of Lawrence next year, but you'll have to fire Leo first. The sooner, the better," Pepper says. 

"No, Leo isn't as bad as the others. Besides, we can't change another Board member so soon after—"

"He's stealing money," Pepper says. "I found some serious accounting mistakes in our books. At first I thought it was negligence, but the evidence indicates that it's been done with intent and it's been going on for a while."

Toni goes still, a cold tight ball of anger settling in the pit of her stomach. "Do you have proof?" 

"Here," he says, and hands Toni a stack of papers. 

Toni takes them automatically, her frown deepening as she leafs through them. "I want Jessica here, and I want her yesterday."

"I already sent your private jet to pick her up in New York," Pepper says. "She'll be arriving in two hours."

"Also, I want—"

"I've already informed Mr. Stane's secretary that you'll be dropping by later today and he should be on standby. I took the liberty of asking Ms. Pearson for a discreet auditor that can check the books and see how deep the damage goes without it becoming common knowledge. I also—"

"All right," Toni says. "You have it under control. I get it. Let's go see Obie now." 

"Shouldn't we wait for Ms. Pearson?" Pepper asks. 

"No, I don't want to catch Obie by surprise with this," Toni says. "It'd be better if I warn him first. He and Leo are close friends. I—I want to be the one who tells him."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You look too pleased with yourself," Obie says, sliding onto the chair next to her. "Should I be scared?"

"Hush," Toni says, not bothering to open her eyes. "I'm in my happy place." She loves the soft leather couch of the Plaza Hotel's suite, how it hugs her body as she sinks into the cushions. Her Malibu furniture is ten times sleeker but it lacks that perfection that only age and use can bring. 

Obie huffs out a snort. "I didn't know you had a happy place that didn't involve a bunch of naked guys and loud music." 

Toni cracks one of her eyes open to glare at him but there isn't much heat behind it. "I resent that. I like naked women just as much." 

"To my utmost chagrin," Obie acknowledges, his tone more resigned than disapproving. 

"You're such a bigot," Toni says fondly. It's an old argument between them, one that has lost some its sharpness from wear. 

"Do you plan to get rid of me, too?" Obie asks conversationally. 

"Excuse me?" Toni fixes her gaze on him and straightens up, the sleepy laziness dulling her thoughts completely gone. 

"Dalton, Leo and now Lawrence," Obie says, meeting her eyes straight on. "I didn't figure it out until today, when Fidelity's analyst asked you what you thought about how the latest Board changes would impact Stark Industries. Your answers were too good."

"I said what you told me to," Toni counters, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice. "It was your idea to do a CEO-CFO roadshow to calm investors. You know how I hate talking to analysts. They're worse than vultures. As long as you're at the top they love you, but the moment they smell weakness—"

"You didn't tell him what I told you to," Obie interrupts her. "You told them what _you_ thought, the plans _you_ have. There was more to those changes than bad luck and happenstance. The way you talked about it today, there was intent." 

"Don't be ridiculous," Toni protests trying to sound convincing, wishing that Obie didn't know her tells so well. "I—Obie, I just wanted to sell the story to the analysts. That's all." 

"Don't lie to me," Obie snaps, and for the first time since Toni can remember there's true anger in his voice. 

Toni is not one to be intimidated. She raises her chin in challenge and says, "I did what I had to do. They were slowing Stark Industries down. I know they were your friends, but you can't deny that SI is doing much better since they're gone. In the last year alone the operating margin—" 

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Obie asks. 

"I didn't want to put you in a position where you needed to choose," Toni tries to explain, even though she knows by the tight set of Obie's mouth that she's failing. 

"You didn't trust me." 

"Obie, you know that's not true," Toni cajoles. "I trust you with my life." 

Something dark and angry crosses Obie's face. "Maybe you shouldn't," he says in a clipped tone before he leaves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What do you want, Toni?" Obie asks.

"I brought you something." Toni sits on Obie's desk and swings her legs back and forth like a child. She smiles winningly at him. "You're going to love it."

"Let me guess, a dead mouse?" 

Toni purses her lips and narrows her eyes. "Are you comparing me to a cat?" 

"Deceptively cute and ready to strike when you least expect it," Obie comments. "It seems rather fitting." 

Toni chuckles, amused despite herself. "Better a cat than a dog, I suppose."

"You lack that certain faithfulness man associates with dogs," Obie says.

"Ouch." Toni clutches her chest theatrically. 

"What did you get me?" Obie says. Toni knows it's more his desire to get rid of her than any real interest in what she wants to show him, but she's about to change that. 

"I, Antonia Stark, Queen of Awesome, Merchant of Death, present you with the new, perfect, never before seen _Jericho Missile_!" Toni chants as if she were a commentator in a cheap radio commercial. "Ta-dah!" 

Obie takes the flash drive from her and plugs it into his computer. "This is brilliant," he says absently after a couple of minutes, eyes still fixed on the screen as he scrolls down. 

"I know," Toni beams. "Am I forgiven?" She hates the small crack in her voice; hopes that Obie doesn't notice it. 

Obie pauses and looks up at her. "There's nothing to forgive, Toni. But if there were," he adds with a wan smile, "I could forgive it for a weapon like this." 

Toni smiles, a weight easing off her shoulders. "I don't deserve you."

Obie claps his hand over hers and squeezes. "How long before we can go into production?" 

"A couple of months?" Toni guesses, mind already busy with engineering details and the adjustments they'll need to make to their production lines. 

"Excellent," Obie says. "I'll start calling my contacts in the DOD. This is good, Toni. Really good. The best thing you've come up with in a long time." 

Toni bites down the angry retort she wants to give to his last remark. Instead she says, "I aim to please." Her relationship with Obie is not at its best. They need to relearn how to talk to each other without it ending in a fight. Toni is trying. She is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Toni, you'll have to do this quarter's analyst call," Obie says.

"Huh?" Toni looks up from her tablet, trying to remember what they'd been talking about. From a corner of her eye she notices the barely contained laughter of the other Board members. "Sorry, I was momentarily distracted. Working on the next product for our Freedom Line," she lies while discreetly closing her Twitter app with a tap. 

"Stark Industries' quarterly analyst call," Obie says in a tight voice. "Remember? That event that makes or breaks our stock performance? Someone needs to do it in my absence."

"Your absence?" Toni repeats, feeling particularly slow. 

Obie exhales. The other Board members remain conspicuously quiet as they usually do when Toni and Obie start arguing. 

"Yes, Toni, my absence. I can hardly hold the conference call from Afghanistan."

"Afghanistan?" Toni is still trying to figure out what he's talking about. 

"The weapons presentation for the Jericho Missiles? Ring a bell?" Exasperation colors his tone. "The generals want a Board member to be there," Obie explains patiently. "Frank is proving to be an excellent CTO." He points his pen at Frank, who nods in acknowledgment. "But he's too new to deal with a contract this big by himself." 

"I don't see why you have to be the one to go to Afghanistan, though. You could stay here and do the call," Toni points out. 

"And who's going to do the presentation?" Obie asks with derision. "You?" 

"Sure. Why not?" Toni shrugs. "I'd rather deal with generals than with analysts." 

"Forget it," Obie says, slamming his hand on the table. "I'm not letting you go into an active war zone."

A tense, awkward silence fills the room. Toni's voice is cold and hard when she speaks. " _You_ are not _letting_ me? Who the hell do you think you are, Obie?" 

Obie sighs and rests his elbows on the table. "For Christ's sake, Toni," he says, rubbing his face, "this isn't the time for you to get into one of your emancipation rants. Afghanistan isn't a charity ball. It's war out there. Real war. I don't want you going there and—"

"Well, that's too fucking bad," Toni snaps. "I'm going."

"It's too dangerous!" Obie says angrily. He turns to the others. "Can someone here make Toni see reason, please?"

Toni arches an eyebrow and stares them all down. She was the one who picked them, and she hopes they're intelligent enough to realize who their boss is, because it sure as hell isn't Obie. 

Nobody speaks up. Toni glares at Obie, daring him to say something else. 

They stare at each other for a long second. It's Obie who looks away first. "If you have nothing useful to contribute," he says to the other Board members, "then get out. The meeting is over."

No one moves. They hover nervously in their seats, eyes darting between Toni and Obie, unsure what to do until Toni takes pity on them and nods her approval. They gather their things and dash out of the room as fast as their feet will carry them. 

"All right," Toni says when she and Obie are alone. "Say what you want to say."

Obie watches the empty chairs in the room and balls his hands, before he faces Toni again. "Is there anything I could say to make you stay?" 

"No, I don't think there is," Toni admits. It's a matter of principle now. 

"Fine! Then go! Do whatever you want," Obie says. "You always do." He stomps to the door and pauses at the last second. 

Toni waits for him to speak. The moment stretches, the tension racketing in the air like a thick, tangible entity. "Go ahead. Whatever it is; just say it," Toni tells him again, unable to withstand the tension. 

Obie shakes his head as if to clear it. "You're such a pain in the ass. I can't believe I'm going to miss you." 

Toni ventures a shy smile, the pressure in her chest easing some. "It's just a week. I'll fly to Afghanistan, dazzle them with the awesomeness that is Stark Industries and fly back. You won't notice I'm gone." 

Obie sighs and the corners of his lips quirk. "If for once in your life you'd listen to me." 

Toni laughs out loud. "Come on, you'd die of shock if I ever did." 

"There's that," Obie admits. "I do like you, Toni. I want you to know that. It's just that sometimes—"

"I know," Toni interrupts him. 

"I'll get everything ready for Afghanistan," he says, but still doesn't leave. "Goodbye, Toni," he says at last. 

Something in his tone sets off Toni's alarm bells. The words are too final. They remind Toni of Elena's last day. Obie can't quit. He can't. Toni wouldn't know what to do without him. After she's back from Afghanistan she'll talk to him, a real talk. Maybe she'll even apologize. If anyone deserves an apology from Toni, it's him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afghanistan happens.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'I can get through this. I _will_ get through this,' she tells herself when she wakes up with a hole in her chest and the shrapnel of her own weapons moving steadily towards her heart—a car battery and a dirty electromagnet the only things standing between her and death.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You have a beautiful face," the leader of the kidnappers says in accented English as he presses the tip of his knife against her cheek. "Beg me to spare it."

 _'People are sharks, Antonia. Smile, always smile,'_ she remembers Maria telling her. Toni does her mother one better. She laughs out loud. She keeps on laughing while the leader carves his name into her face. 

She says, "No! You fucking asshole! Leave me the fuck alone! Do not touch me, you son of a camel-faced whore!" She screams and snarls until her voice gives out, but she doesn't beg and she doesn't cry. 

Much later, as Toni washes the come and blood off her body with a dirty rag drenched in stale water, she swears to herself, 'I will survive this.' She's fought too hard in her life to let a bunch of misogynist fundamentalist assholes break her. 

Yinsen waits in the distance until she's done before offering to check her over. She's so pathetically grateful that he asks instead of just assuming she'd want him to that she says yes. He treats the cuts and bruises on her body with sure, steady hands. He talks to her all the while, telling her what he's going to do next, where he's going to touch her, warning her if it's going to hurt. She wants to tell him to shut the fuck up. She doesn't need his pity. 

She swallows the words. 

She's fine. She's Antonia Fucking Stark! 

She. Is. Not. Going. To. Break. 

They come for her again. And again. They have yet to tell her what they want. If they want anything. Other than to hear her scream. 

She still doesn't cry. Maybe she's forgotten how. 

At some point they bring a camera with them and force her to look into the lens. "A ransom video? Really?" she says with a flash of teeth after they're done. "And I here I was thinking you'd go for torture porn. Not that I blame you, mind. If I were a guy and my dick was that small, I wouldn't want to broadcast it on YouTube either. Next thing you know, people are calling you Tiny bin Dick in every Internet forum." 

The disbelieving, enraged look on the leader's face as her words finally sink in is one of the few good memories she has from her otherwise lousy Afghanistan adventure trip. She pays the price for her insolence but it's still worth it.

It's been a week, or maybe a month (it's hard to tell) when they take her out of her cave-cum-cell and show her their backward little town. The daylight blinds her with its intensity. When her eyes finally adjust, Toni wishes they hadn't. The village is filled with weapons, Stark Industries' weapons, _her_ weapons. The irony isn't lost on her. 

Tiny bin Dick orders her to build him more. 

Toni has to dig her ragged nails into the hand-shaped bruises on her thighs to keep herself from laughing. Asking Antonia Stark to build weapons when she wants you _dead_ wins the Darwin Award of the decade. 

They want the Jericho Missile. Toni nods her acceptance, meek and broken, like they expect her to be. She's been playing the crowd her whole life. This is just upping the ante. 

She takes the weapons and the tools they give her and creates something completely different. She doesn't do it for them. She does it for _herself_.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Don't waste your life," Yinsen breathes out before he dies. A plea, a command, a last wish.

Toni walks out of the cave, safe within the cocoon of her metal suit. Her heart is wracked with grief but filled with purpose. 

She emerges from the chrysalis of her dead armor utterly alone. In the distance, the faint echo of her bombs going off brings a vindictive smile to her lips that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She contemplates the smoke and fire rising into the sky and hopes the death of her captors is slow and painful.

Around her the desert stretches like a deceitful promise of freedom . . . or of death. Toni protects her head and body as best she can against the unforgiving heat of the sun and starts walking. 

_Don't waste your life,_ Yinsen's ghost whispers in her ear as Toni forces herself to keep moving. Her feet give out under her, heavy with exhaustion. The sand burns her skin wherever it touches. Toni ignores the pain like she does the thirst. 

_Don't waste your life._

She pushes herself up and takes another step. 

And another.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course it's Rhodey who finds her.

It's the story of her life. 

She wonders if Rhodey will ever be able to see her as anything other than the poor, fucked-up shell of a broken woman clutching at the last straws of sanity. 

It turns out she didn't forget how to cry. 

For a while, it's all she knows how to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She's never building anyone a weapon again.

Ever. 

The stock market doesn't like her decision much. 

The stock market can suck terrorist dick for all she cares. See how _they_ like it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She locks herself in her lab and works on the arc reactor until she's about to pass out from exhaustion. Then she drinks more coffee and keeps on working. It's a battle of wills between her mind and her body. Her mind wins more often than not. JARVIS has stopped trying to talk sense into her and Pepper isn't allowed in the workshop any more. Last time he tried to physically force her to go to bed. It hadn't ended well. Toni was spiteful enough to milk the panic attack that had caused for all it was worth.

She needs to work. She can either drown herself in work or in alcohol. The former is the lesser evil. She remembers all too well how easy it is to drink until the pain is nothing but a dull pressure in a world so numb nothing seems to matter. It'd be so fucking easy to go that way. Toni _wants_ to go that way. The only thing stopping her is the knowledge that if she does that, if she drowns her feelings and her memories with the burning taste of alcohol, she's letting them win, and Starks don't lose. 

So she works and works. With JARVIS' assistance the Mark II takes shape under Toni's fingers. You, Butterfinger and Dummy's clumsy attempts to help are barely enough to keep her thoughts from turning inward. It's hard not to remember whose hands had held the first armor steady as she worked. 

Toni works.

When it's no longer possible to keep her body's needs at bay she sleeps for a minute, an hour, a day. It's hard to keep time straight. She wakes up drenched in sweat with the taste of sand, come and stale water in her mouth. She chases it away with bitter, black coffee and works some more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She and Rhodey are fighting.

He wants her to keep building weapons. 

Toni . . . Toni wants _more_. 

The thing is . . . before Afghanistan, Toni didn't know how to say no to Rhodey. They're both having trouble dealing with the fact that her no's now apply to him as well. 

There's a part of her that wants to give in, because this is _Rhodey_ , and she's been trained by over two decades of friendship to compromise. Then she catches a glimpse of her face in the mirror, sees the scars and realizes that she can't. 

No. 

No. 

No.

She's sick and tired of having the word mean nothing. It stops now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I want the scars gone," she says to Rhodey one night on the phone.

"All right." 

They're still fighting but, "I don't trust anyone else with the arc reactor while I'm under. I want you there for it." 

"All right." 

The thing is . . . after Afghanistan, Rhodey is the one who can't say no to her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was going to age with good grace. That had been the original plan.

Afghanistan changes that too.

The scalpel erases the scars from her face and body. While they're at it, Toni has them erase all other telltale marks the last ten years of life left on her. 

She looks thirty-three and feels sixty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The unmarred perfection of her new skin is as alien to her as the scars had been. Toni hates her new body, the lies it tells, how it denies Afghanistan and all that happened there. The arc reactor is the only truth she has left. Proof of life. It's the only part of her body that still feels her own.

On good days, she's able to flee into her mind and ignore her body and its useless needs, the fact that it's there, that it exists at all. On bad days, she catches glimpses of her reflection in the mirror and has to close her eyes until the urge to tear apart the stranger watching her through the looking glass has passed.

They've broken her. The one thing she swore to herself she wouldn't let happen, and it did. 

It's there, every time she flinches without meaning to; in the way she can't stand human touch, not even the soft brush of Pepper's delicate fingers against her wrist; when she wakes up, stomach roiling with memories of things that are no longer real; in the way that she sometimes wants nothing more than to forget Afghanistan and what happened there, shut off those memories and put them away like a badly written book. Even if it would mean forgetting Yinsen. 

It's the treacherous voice in her head telling her it's her fault, even though Toni knows it's a lie. She isn't the one to blame. _She isn't_. Her head knows it; it's her defective heart that hasn't quite caught up. 

And it's there, when she spends seconds, minutes, hours, watching the arc reactor, wondering if it wouldn't be easier to pull it out, let the shrapnel of Stark Tech in her body run their course. 

No. 

No.

 _Don't waste your life._ Toni repeats the words like a mantra and forces herself to keep going.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you sure you want to do this, Madame?" JARVIS asks, a hint of uncertainty in his normally unflappable voice.

"Yes," Toni says. It's been a long time since she's been this sure of something. 

A bell chimes as she walks into the parlor. She takes in the thousand drawings and photos decorating the walls in lieu of actual wallpaper, before a burly woman with a military buzz cut hurrying her way catches her attention. 

"Oh, finally," the woman says, a welcoming smile taking the edge from her words. Toni is entranced by the small dimples in her cheeks and the explosion of colors adorning the skin of her arms and neck. "Sorry, I've been stood up by every single customer today. I was starting to think it was some kind of joke. Name's Heather." 

Toni has the good grace to look chagrined. "Yeah, about that . . . Let me know what you would've usually made and I'll triple the amount. I just wanted to make sure there weren't going to be other clients when I came." 

"Wait, it was you who made all those appointments?" Her expression wavers between baffled and annoyed. 

"My butler did," Toni corrects her. "He was the one to pick you out." 

"Your _butler_?" she snorts and then makes a double take. "OMFG, you're Toni Fucking Stark!" 

"IKR," Toni says, unable to help it. 

Heather sniggers, shoulders twitching as she tries to control herself. 

Toni's own lips quiver. "Feel free to LOL. I won't be offended." 

Heather roars with laughter and to her own surprise, Toni laughs along with her. 

"So, Toni Stark, what can I do for you?" Heather asks after she's caught her breath. 

Toni's throat feels dry. "I want a tattoo," she says after a second's hesitation and slides a check across the table. 

Heather takes it and whistles. She raises an eyebrow at Toni. "I don't know what your butler told you, but you don't have enough skin on your body for this much ink." 

"That's for your discretion; the ink comes on top," Toni clarifies. 

Heather caresses the check for a moment, sighs and pushes it back towards Toni. "I didn't know I had principles, but apparently I do." She huffs and shakes her head in disbelief. "I'm as surprised as you are, but the silence is for free. Now, what kind of tattoo do you have in mind?" 

Toni stares at her, unsure what to make of it. She's not used to people refusing her money. She opens the buttons on her blouse and hangs it over a chair before taking off her undershirt. Heather doesn't try to hide her curiosity as her eyes catch the glowing pulse of the arc reactor. She doesn't ask, but Toni finds herself volunteering, "I've got a heart condition. Not many people know about it. This helps." 

Heather's gaze catches Toni's. "I won't tell." 

Toni finds that she believes her. "One word," Toni says, "I just want one word. A reminder. Starting here." She points with her finger to her breastbone, directly under the arc reactor and traces an invisible line all the way down to her pelvis. "Until here," she says, brushing the scalloped hem of her panties. 

"What word?" Heather asks. 

"Survivor."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni lies in the darkness of her bed and traces the tattoo with her fingers. It's the only part of her body she can bear to touch.

Under the bluish light of the arc reactor, the contrast between the dark ink and her pale skin doesn't seem as harsh. The rough, jagged lines of the letters remind her of broken glass.

It fits her new self: Antonia Stark 2.0.

She _is_ broken and all the more dangerous for it. The world should tread carefully around the shards of her former self lest they cut themselves on Antonia Stark's sharp edges.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni dons a dress with no back, takes her fastest car and crashes her own benefit gala.

She relishes the attention of the press as she saunters in. The eyes of men and women alike cling to the enticing arch of her pale back, mesmerized by the low cut of Toni's dress. She's all too aware of the tantalizing dance of the silk against the curve of buttocks, how the shimmery cloth threatens to reveal yet more skin if Toni were to move this way or the other, only to remain stubbornly in place. It's a gorgeous dress.

"Miss Stark?" A man in a plain, black suit addresses her. 

"Yeah?" Toni peers at him: early 40's, bureaucrat, boring. She dismisses him, absently scanning the crowd for someone more her speed. 

"Agent Coulson," the guys offers, looking at her as if he expects the name to mean something. 

Toni tries desperately to remember if he's someone important. She promised Obie to be on her best behavior. "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah," she says, trying to buy time. "The guy from the . . . ," she trails off, knowing he will fill in the blank for her. 

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," he says, chest puffing up with pride. 

Toni knows every division and agency out there and she's never heard of them. "You need a new name for that," she tells him, because they really, really do. 

He answers something, but Toni's already written him off as insignificant. Her attention is back on the crowd. She catches a glimpse of Pepper at the center of a small group of old men, thin and tall, wearing a mouth-watering charcoal Tom Ford suit with wide stripes that makes all other men at the benefit look dull in comparison. 

Toni agrees to whatever Agent Boring is telling her and walks over to Pepper. "Dance with me," she demands and drags him to the dance floor, ignoring Pepper's protests. 

Pepper's fingers are soft and hesitant against Toni's calloused ones. They wait for Toni to tense and flinch back. "It's all right," Toni says after a while, relaxing into Pepper's light hold. It's the longest time she's been able to withstand a man's touch since she came back from Afghanistan. 

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" Toni asks with a tilt of her head. Pepper looks kind of flustered, which is really amusing given the circumstances. "Because your virtue is safe with me. Even Casanova's virtue would be safe with me these days," Toni jokes. 

Pepper presses his lips into a thin line, the way he does when Toni says something he doesn't approve of. "What?" Toni asks, unsure of what she's done this time. 

"Would you like a drink?" Pepper says, letting go of Toni the second the music stops. "I'll get us some drinks. A vodka martini for me and water with extra olives disguised as a martini for you." 

"Okay," Toni nods her agreement and allows him to escape.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The pictures of cases upon cases of weapons marked with the Stark Industries' logo cut Toni's hands with the unforgiving sharpness of Occam's razor. Toni doesn't want to believe it, but the simplest, the only logical explanation is—

"When were these taken?" she asks, dreading the answer. 

"Yesterday," answers Carrie . . . or is it Christine? Toni should make an effort to remember her name. 

"I didn't approve any shipments," Toni says. 

But she knows who did. She _knows._

"Well, your company did," Christine says with contempt. 

Obie. 

Toni's fingers clench and unclench. "I'm not my company."

Obie. It's always been Obie. How could have she been so gullible?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She confronts him, needing to hear him say it. As long as there's even a sliver of doubt she'll side with him. "What's going on in Gulmira?" she asks him.

"Toni, Toni," Obie chides her. "You can't afford to be this naive." He places his hand on the bare skin of her back, low enough that it's bordering on improper without crossing the line. Toni wrestles down the spike of irrational fear his touch causes. She forces herself to stay still, not to flinch. 

"Let's take a picture," Obie says, guiding her closer to the cameras. "Come on, picture time." 

Toni's lips stretch into a vapid grin, decades of conditioning working in her favor. Her world might be ending, but Toni Stark will always have a smile for the cameras. 

"Toni, who do you think locked you out?" Obie whispers in her ear while he waves at the photographers. He pulls her closer, his hand scorching hot against the chilled skin of Toni's back. "I was the one who filed the injunction against you," he says. "It was the only way I could protect you." 

The admission hurts more than the tortures, more than the rapes, more than Yinsen's death. 

"No," Toni gasps. It comes out small and broken. Obie's smile is wide and triumphant. He thinks he's won. "No," Toni repeats. 

The cameras keep flashing as he walks her down the stairs, Obie's supporting hand the only thing keeping her steady.

 _People are sharks, Antonia._ Toni smiles into the cameras while she bleeds on the inside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni forces herself to watch the news. She listens to the anchor describing the helplessness and desperation of Gulmira's inhabitants and sees Yinsen's face in every refugee. Yinsen's wife. Yinsen's children. Yinsen's siblings.

_Don't waste your life._

She walks onto the assembly pad and opens her arms. Her robots whirl around her, securing the pieces of armor under JARVIS' careful guidance. Toni's doubts and uncertainties fade away with every click of metal sliding into place. 

By the time the faceplate glides down and the eyes of the armor glow with the power of the arc reactor, Toni knows what she needs to do. 

War was her father's kingdom. Peace will be Toni's legacy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afghanistan is a much nicer destination the second time around. It doesn't hurt that she's wearing a heavily armored suit with targeting technology so advanced it'd give the military industry a collective orgasm. Not that Toni has any intention of sharing.

She destroys the weapons stolen from _her_ company and kills everyone stupid enough to try and stop her. 

It feels good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The press calls her Iron _Man_.

Typical.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To say that Rhodey is angry with her would a bit of an understatement.

Toni wishes there was something she could do to make him understand, but she doesn't have the time to soothe his ruffled feathers. 

She has bigger problems. Obadiah Stane shaped problems. 

Rhodey will just have to wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pepper quits.

Toni doesn't have enough energy left to feel surprise. What's one more betrayal?

"You're going to kill yourself, Toni," Pepper says, a stubborn set to his mouth. "I'm not going to be a part of it."

The two of them stare at each other from across the room. Toni had thought that Pepper of all people. . . . She doesn't know how to make him understand that the suit and the missions have become her only reason to stay alive. 

Being Iron Man isn't suicide; it's survival. 

She needs a purpose to keep going. There's nothing else. 

Toni closes her eyes and waits for Pepper to leave. He surprises her by walking closer instead. Pepper breaches the distance separating them, places his hand on Toni's shoulder and squeezes. 

"You're all that I have too, you know," Pepper says. He brushes his lips against Toni's sweaty temples and takes the flash drive from her fingers. "I'll see what I can find."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Easy, easy," Obadiah soothes Toni, caressing her hair. He slows Toni's fall, being careful that she doesn't hurt herself when her muscles lock and refuse to cooperate.

"I didn't want it to come to this," he says, looking at Toni's paralyzed body with regret. "I almost hesitated too long. When I ordered the hit on you, I worried that I was going to kill the golden goose. I told them to make it quick, you know." He sounds almost apologetic. "But I'm glad they didn't. I'm glad you managed to come back, Toni. You had one last golden egg to give."

He strokes the back of his fingers against Toni's cheek and kisses her forehead. His hand closes over the arc reactor, the only part of Toni's body that's still her own, and rips it away. 

"Goodbye, Toni," Obadiah says. "I wish you could've seen my prototype." He walks away and leaves her to die.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni made it out of Afghanistan alive. Compared to that, dragging herself from the living room to her workshop seems almost too easy.

Toni can survive Obadiah Stane. 

She will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obadiah's corpse lies among the debris and broken glass of Stark Industries' main facility. Beneath the charred pieces of his metal armor, his lifeless body seems strangely old and fragile. Toni ignores the glaring red numbers of the suit's HUD as it counts down the critical power loss of her arc reactor. She let's herself fall down next to Obie's dead body, too tired to stay up.

"Arrogant asshole," she says to him. "You should have killed me while you had the chance." 

Toni should feel happy that she and Pepper are still alive, but she can't help mourning the friend she thought Obie was. 

"I don't think he can hear you," Pepper points out, standing next to Toni's prone body. 

"You know how I swore to you I'd never make you change my arc reactor again?" Toni says, aiming for casual.

"Yes?" Pepper asks suspiciously. 

"I lied," Toni manages to rasp before she passes out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she comes back to herself Pepper is cursing a blue streak. It's one of the most amusing things Toni has ever heard.

"I hate you," Pepper says when he notices that Toni has regained consciousness. He grimaces with revulsion. "You and your disgusting pus." 

"It's not pus," Toni gasps, lips twitching. 

"I don't care if it's not," Pepper snaps. "It feels like pus; it smells like pus. It is pus! You should be thankful I didn't puke on you." 

"I love you, too, Pepper." 

Pepper makes a face at her and cleans his hand on the sleeve of Toni's bodysuit. 

"Hey, don't do that," Toni complains. "That's a special textile designed to absorb impact. It's not a towel."

"I need to clean my hand someplace," Pepper says, ignoring Toni's attempts to move away from him. 

"Use your own suit." 

"Are you insane? It's Armani." 

"Mr. Potts, Miss Stark, I take it you're both all right," Agent Boring says, stopping next to them. 

"She needs medical attention," Pepper says immediately, pointing to Toni.

"What? I don't! I'm perfectly fine," Toni lies. The last thing she needs are a bunch of strangers poking at her. Just the idea makes her stomach roll. 

"She fainted," Pepper tells Agent Boring. 

"I passed out," Toni corrects him. "Besides, that was ages ago." 

"No, it wasn't."

"Yes, it was."

"Was not."

"Was too."

Agent Boring coughs. "Mr. Potts, Miss Stark, maybe we should move this riveting argument to the helicopter. The cleaning crew has just arrived." 

Toni and Pepper stop to stare at him. He smiles blandly and adds, "We can use the time to discuss your alibi."

"Alibi?" Toni frowns. 

"Of course," Agent Boring says. "We can't let the world find out that you're Iron Man."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni listens to Coulson drone on about the cover story SHIELD dreamed up for her.

Iron Man is her bodyguard—one she hired after she came back from Afghanistan. To keep her safe. 

Coulson doesn't say it, but Toni knows what the linchpin of SHIELD's cover story is: Toni is a woman. The world expects her to cower in fear after being kidnapped and tortured. They expect her to seek protection.

No one out there believes her able to protect herself. No one will question SHIELD's outlandish cover-up.

Fuck them. 

Fuck them all to hell.

Toni's tired of secrets, of being the little puppet of men with hidden agendas. She's her own person. She's always been her own person. It's time for the world to catch up.

Toni stares into the flashing lights of the cameras, letting the brightness blind her. She smiles her mother's smile and basks in the attention as her father would have. Then she says the one thing that's uniquely Toni.

"The truth is . . . I am Iron Man."

The press goes crazy. Next to her, Pepper and Rhodey groan in desperation while Agent Coulson dials his phone furiously, trying to do what little damage control he still can.

Toni laughs out loud and it feels as if she's never going to stop. 

Yes, she will survive this too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The end — for now 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I re-purposed some dialog from Iron Man I to fit this story.
> 
> 2) I want to thank everyone for the wonderful feedback and the lovely comments. And for the kudos, of course! Thank you for reading.


End file.
